Day 4 - Rome III

After staying up later last night to listen to some funny stories from some of the guys who went out last night, it was nice to be able to sleep in a little later than we had been. We got going at 8:20am and headed out to see some piazzas, monuments, and a museum.

First we headed over to the Pantheon, which is only about 1 or 2 minutes away from our hotel. We had been to the piazza in front of it a few times before, but I had not actually gone into it yet. The front colonnade is quite impressive, but the backside shows lots of deterioration, so I wasn’t expecting much from the inside. But to my pleasant surprise, it was quite incredible. It showed little wear and tear for such an old building. We were assigned to do a sketch of something with the Pantheon, so I did a sketch of the front façade and colonnade. Next, we went and visited Area Sacra Di Largo Argentina which was a sort of test forum before the Roman Forum was built. It was built in a very close area, so it did not have enough room to really expand. It is significant because this is where they believe that Julius was assassinated. This area has also become a homeless cat no-kill shelter, so we played the game of counting the amount of roman cats in the forum. Haha!

Next we traveled to several different piazzas and fountain areas. We visited the Piazza Navona, which has the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (a fountain created by Bernini with an Egyptian obelisk on top of it), Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps in the Piazza di Spagna, Piazza del Popolo, and a church right next to our hotel: Santa Maria Sopra Minerva.

Each of these places were quite fascinating and impressive. They seem to be extreme tourist attractions as well as hot spots for locals to hang out. I cannot help but think about how bizarre it would be to have the city that I live in be a hot spot for international tourists and have so many people around places where we would like to hang out. A lot of these different piazzas were constructed to either host some event in ancient Rome, like the Piazza Novona where chariot races were held, or to honor either some emperor of ancient Rome or one of their mythological gods. In Rome after many of their conquests they brought some monument back to show their power and might. 

There are many obelisks from ancient Egypt that were brought back, but unfortunately some of them have had to be restored, so they are not completely original. There are a few that are still mostly intact and are quite impressive in their quality, not only of preservation, but of detail and precision of the carvings and hieroglyphics. It was also interesting to learn about some of the different styles of architecture. When we went to the church, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, we saw some of the Baroque and Gothic styles in the church with the different shaped arches and accents of gold added to the church. It is exciting to get to see these different styles in person, rather than attempting to learn them from a book or something.

We also got to visit a small Leonardo da Vinci museum where they have created models of some of his drawings for machines and contraption that were never built. It was really cool to see some of his drawing being recreated into some machines that we could play with and see how they worked. Leonardo da Vinci is one of my favorite people because of all of the different things that he did and created. We are going to be going to another museum with some of his stuff later on, so I am excited about that.

I still have a couple of days left in Rome, and tomorrow we are going to be doing a photo scavenger hunt around Rome. That should be fun! I am also excited and hopeful that we will be going to some crypts and catacombs before we leave Rome.