Today was the ‘Ancient Rome’ day of the Rick Steve’s tour.  We started with a guided tour of the Forum.  Lots of ruins…. in ruins.  Lots of marble was stolen from these buildings to use for building materials.  Not just for the beautiful marble such as found in churches in the area, but they stole marble to burn it and make quicklime for mortar.  The Forum is more or less the birthplace of society- news, politic, debate, trade.

  

 

The Romans wanted to be remembered.  Their buildings were on a scale of giants- they used their architecture to intimidate.

We went on to the Colosseum.  It was massive, tremendous and very well designed.  They could empty the stands in 30 minutes.

 

We ate a sandwich somewhere and continued on to the church of San Clemente.  This was an interesting building because it really showed how Rome is made up of layers of history.  For example, around the 12th century AD San Clemente was built atop an abandoned church that was built in the 2nd century AD.  That church was built on top of homes of ancient Romans from around 1st century BC.

We went back to Santa Maria Vittoria to see Bernini’s Ecstasy of St. Theresa.  It was phenomenal.  The lighting wasn’t great so my pictures don’t do it justice.  For 50 cents you could light it and it was a nice effect but it confused my camera and all of those pictures are even more terrible.  Bernini was a true master.

Later we went to the Capuchin Crypts.  It had the feel of a Ripley’s believe it or not.  It was a bit cheesy and I even felt it was disrespectful.  All the Capuchin monks have their bones sent back to this crypt when they die and their bones are used to create scenes or sculptures.  I really felt it was in poor taste but if this is what these monks wanted done with their remains who am I to argue?

San Ignazio church was another interesting church.  They had designed and built a very large church but ran out of funds for the main dome so they built a flat ceiling there and painted an optical illusion of a dome.  It looked real when you walked in, and if you weren’t looking for it you would never notice it was painted.

After dinner we got hot chocolate at a place called Wanted.  Hot chocolate in Italy is great.  It’s like a thin chocolate pudding, you CAN drink it but you could use a spoon.  We went back to the Colosseum and forum and took a few pics after dark.  The last pic at the forum is probably my favorite shot I took in Rome.  After that we headed back for some shut-eye.