Back in Rome and I wish we could stay here forever! Or at least a few more weeks. But, alas, we must leave tomorrow.
With only a half day in Rome after all of our train travel from Sorrento, we again tried to pack the day full. We planned to spend the afternoon in the northern portion of Rome so we decided to head out that way to find lunch before visiting a couple museums. When we got off the subway we opted to take the scenic route through the Borghese Gardens that our GPS recommended, but once we got on the other side there were no restaurants to be found. So we decided just to go straight to the Villa Giulia National Etruscan Museum since we were short on time. This was probably a bad idea because the collection is actually much larger than I had anticipated and hunger started to set in pretty soon after our arrival. We pushed on, but our eyes soon began to glaze over. We manage to hold it together long enough to see a few interesting pieces though.
We saw this terracotta sarcophagus which is known worldwide as the "Sarcofago degli Sposi" (or "Sarcophagus of the Spouses") and has a "twin" displayed in the Louvre Museum. The founder of the Villa Giulia Museum purchased this work in over 400 fragments! I cannot imagine putting together that puzzle.
We also came across these gold sheets from the 6th century BCE which were important documents for understanding the Etruscan language when they were found in 1964. Two are written in Etruscan, while the third is written in Phoenician and corresponds to the longer of the two Etruscan inscriptions, though it apparently is not a literal translation.
The museum had an extensive collection of Etruscan pottery, which I was rather surprised by; I tend to only think of terracotta sarcophagi when I recall the Etruscans from my Art History studies. It seems they had quite a strong connection with the Greeks and Greek pottery traditions.
After awhile the hunger became too much and we left in search of food. By this time it was pushing 3:00pm and, being rather far from the touristy center of Rome, many of the restaurants were closing for the afternoon. We eventually found a cute little cafe where the pastries looked delicious, but which served some pretty forgettable reheated pasta and chicken on the restaurant side. Nonetheless, it was enough sustenance to get us moving again.
We were off to the Borghese Gallery where we had a 5:00pm reservation, but had been advised to arrive a half hour early to pick up our tickets. Reservations are required for entry, and you definitely have to reserve in advance. I had such issues trying to reserve through their website from the states; the transaction would not go through each time I tried. I tried again a week prior to our visit while we were in Florence and it was at that time that it struck me to try paying with PayPal which finally worked! I'm so glad it did and that I didn't put it off any longer; when we arrived for our reservation they had signs out saying they were completely booked for the next week!
From the restaurant we hopped on the Metro back one stop, which put us closer to the entrance of the Gallery than hiking a half an hour back through the Borghese Gardens. Once at the stop we had to take a series of escalators up to ground level. At the first escalator a man with a dolly got on ahead of us followed by a woman. The dolly scratched along the metal sides and gave us momentary pause, but started moving along fine so we go on. We should have listened to our intuition because at the top the dolly got stuck. The guy was trying to force it out when the escalator forced the woman into him. The whole thing lurched forward and I thought it had broken free, but then it was stuck again and I was barreling towards them. I panicked and tried to jump up onto the handrail to make it over them, but my purse, which was slung across my body, was still hanging down and hit the stuck group and I heard a loud ripping of fabric as Russ (who had thought more quickly to jump entirely over the side of the escalator) caught me around the middle and prevented me from somersaulting face-first off the end of the escalator. What an insane experience! It was like being in a movie and must have looked ridiculous. Discovering that nobody was really hurt I set about looking for the source of the ripping noise. I was terrified that the actual fabric of my dress had torn. I discovered that it was only a popped waist seam. Phew! That is an easy fix and was covered by the belt I was wearing. So on we went, only a little more shaken than we had been a few minutes before.
We arrived a half hour before we needed to, so we found a bench in the courtyard and relaxed for a little while before picking up our tickets and grabbing a coffee in their cafeteria. We briefly met up with our friend Babette, who had hoped she might be able to join us, but instead made a reservation for later in her trip since the gallery was fully booked. It was nice to see her another time before we left Italy, even if it was only a quick chat. We then headed into the gallery, which holds a collection of exquisite Bernini sculptures and paintings by Caravaggio, Raphael, and Titian. The first floor, which houses the sculptures, quickly became Russ's favorite attraction in all of Italy! (I have learned on this trip that he is quite the fan of Bernini's sculpture, which I did not know before.) I can't fault him though; these sculptures were incredible, especially the way he has depicted Daphne's hands and feet turning into trees!
Russ was much less taken with the upstairs picture gallery, but there were certainly some great paintings. I was particularly drawn to this one, which upon viewing from across the room I instantly knew was a Veronese. I am familiar with a painting of Apollo and Daphne by Veronese in which the arm of Apollo and the leaves are depicted so similarly to this one that they had to be by the same hand. What do you think?
We left the gallery and took a leisurely stroll through the Borghese Gardens back toward the Metro. It really is a lovely public park!
After a much less eventful trip on the Metro we headed back to our hotel, but first we stopped at a gelateria called the Green Pistachio for one last scoop of gelato before our Italian vacation comes to an end.
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