La Dolce Vita

Today we had a perfect day in Rome. We started off early and walked about a half hour from our hotel to the Pantheon, arriving before the surrounding piazza and the building itself were swarmed with tourists. The Pantheon has fascinated me since I first studied it many years ago. The mathematical perfection and engineering of the concrete are just incredible.

We then walked over to the Trevi Fountain and threw in our coins to ensure that we returned to Rome. All of the coins that are thrown in the fountain are collected and used to feed Rome's poor. They were actually doing the cleaning when we arrived so we weren't able to get as close to the fountain. It took us a couple tries to throw the coins far enough that they landed in the water!

Coins finally in the water, we set off back toward the Roman Forum to visit the Capitoline Museum, part of which claims to be one of the oldest museums; it was founded in 1471 when a pope gave ancient statues to the people of Rome. The museum houses some of the most famous statues from Ancient Rome including the equestrian portrait of Marcus Aurelius (the greatest surviving equestrian statue from antiquity), the Dying Gaul and the Capitoline She-Wolf with the Renaissance additions of Romulus and Remus.

This piece is not famous, so far as I know, but look at his stylish duds! 

Now, most sculptures from Ancient Greece and Rome were painted, not the white marble we see nowadays, but I think it is so neat how the sculptor has used the grains of the different stones to create the patterning of the clothing. I never saw anything like this in my art history studies, but there were quite a few at this museum. 

The underground Tabularium, which once held Ancient Rome's archives (written on tablets) connects the two buildings of the museum and has an incredible view of the Roman Forum. 

In the afternoon we had a tour of the Vatican scheduled so we hopped on the metro and headed over to that area for lunch. We grabbed a couple sandwiches at Duecento Gradi. They were pretty good! 

We then met up with our guide, Dario, founder of Mind the Guide tours. Mind the Guide specializes in small group sizes (around 8 people per tour), which provides a much more personal experience than the massive tour groups we have seen all over Italy. They also confirm every tour with a minimum of two people. It happened that for our tour we were the only people who signed up. We were joined by Dario's friend from San Francisco, Babette, and received a semi-private tour for a very reasonable price (45 euro per person plus admission). We toured the Pinacoteca and Pius-Clementine museum, Sistine Chapel, Saint Peter's Basilica and crypts. Dario studied art history and was incredibly knowledgeable, but also very personable and entertaining. We had a fantastic time on the tour. I highly recommend everyone look him up if you are in Rome; he offers other tours too.

When I toured the Vatican years ago  I was enamored with the Arnoldo Pomadoro sculpture in the court yard (one of the people in our group got to spin it!), but sadly it was under restoration at the moment. 

In any case, Dario pointed out an urn piece (concocted in the Renaissance from unrelated pieces from antiquity) that I could spin. I fought all my museum training and gave into the desire to touch the work and gave it a spin! I felt like a rebel, though the handling of precious works of art seems to be incredibly lax in Italy compared to the USA. 

On a silly side note, when I visited the Vatican years ago the tour lasted way longer than we had expected and we were famished by the end when our guide broke out a package of Oreos. On the advice of my friend Claire, who was with me on that tour, I came prepared this time with some Oreos!

At the end of the tour Dario and Babette invited us to join them for drinks. We had been thinking about trying to rush over to Castel Sant'Angelo, but figured we didn't really have time so we said yes! We had such a good time and a much more authentic Roman experience than we would have just running off to another tourist site. It was probably one of the most fun experiences of our trip. When traveling, if the opportunity arises to do something with locals, I encourage you to say yes! These are the unique experiences that will make your trip meaningful and memorable. 

Roma!

We began the day with breakfast at a restaurant on Piazza Il Campo, which came with our hotel booking. As we ate our breakfast we watched the piazza come to life for the day. We then returned to our B&B and headed out for the train station to move onto Rome!

Continuing the theme of our whole trip, the train stopped on the tracks for 20 minutes, making us 20 minutes late pulling into Florence where we were connecting from a regional train to a high-speed train to Rome. Our layover between trains was 20 minutes. We arrived just in time to run up to the doors as they were closing, with a gaggle of other travelers close at our heels. I held my tongue as one of the train employees smirked and told us that once the doors were closed they couldn't open them and we'd have to purchase new tickets, even though he clearly new what was happening and could have told them not to close the doors when a group of ten or so people were running together toward the train. Instead of purchasing a new ticket at the machines like he told us to do, I found a very nice woman working at the ticket office and showed her that we had been on the delayed regional. She went out of her way to personally help us get onto the next high-speed train to Rome, one that was even faster than the one we had originally booked, without having to buy another ticket or pay any extra. The catch was that we had to go without reserved seats, but it turned out to be a relatively empty train and we found seats no problem. Relaxing a little from the stress of missing our original train, we enjoyed a lunch of panini, grapes, and Parmesan cheese that we had picked from the grocery store on the way to the station in Siena.

Eventually we arrived in Rome a half hour later than we had planned and it took a little longer to get to our hotel than we'd planned, which through off the rest of the day but we pushed on. We wanted to purchase the Roma Pass (which  gives you use of public transportation and two museums free of charge, plus a reduction in price for other state-run museums and events) because we heard that there was a separate, shorter line for the Colosseum. We asked our hotel the best place to buy them and they actually sell the passes so we didn't have to waste any time looking!

We walked a couple blocks down the road to visit the Colosseum, something Russ has wanted to see since completing a report on it in the 5th grade and the thing he has been most looking forward to on this trip. (I forgot to mention that our hotel room has a balcony with a view of the Colosseum!)

Upon arriving we found that the Roma Pass/reserved ticket line was the long line and there was no line to purchase tickets! We soon found out that this was due to security measures that we have encountered at many sites in Italy that are significantly increased from when I was here years ago and, therefore, hadn't anticipated. We eventually made it through the line and Russ was able to fulfill his childhood dream! We also have a night time tour of the Colosseum booked for Saturday, so we didn't linger too long, but hurried over to the Roman Forum because we only had an hour before it closed. It was a lot bigger than I had remembered and we had to rush through, but it was neat to see all the ruins up close.

Thoroughly exhausted from the day we headed back to our hotel, but not before stopping around the corner for some pizza and fried mozzarella!

Side trip to Siena

Today we took a relaxing side trip to Siena. Florence's medieval arch-rival, Siena is less crowded with tourists and less hurried than Florence, which made for a nice change of pace.

We arrived around noon, got settled in our hotel right off of Piazza Il Campo, and went in search of lunch. We found a pizzeria with an address not to far from the hotel and set out to find it. What Apple maps failed to reveal was the elevation; the pizzeria was close as the crow flies, but required a hike down one hill and then up another. Siena is one of Tuscany's "hill towns" and it definitely deserves that designation being situated a top three hills. Having worked up a good appetite after our hike, we enjoyed delicious pizza and a stunning view.

Heading back toward the old center of town, we decided to visit Santa Maria Della Scala. For centuries this building located across from the Duomo served as a hospital, foundling home, and pilgrim lodge. It now serves as a museum, which is much larger than it appears, stretching multiple levels into the basement. There are a couple highlights of the collection, one of which being the frescos in Pellegrinaio Hall depicting medieval Siena's health care and welfare system. Another is Jacopo Della Quercia's 15th-century Fountain of Joy, which had badly deteriorated by the 19th century and is now dismantled and displayed in the museum along side plaster casts that were used to create a replica for Piazza Il Campo.

 We also viewed their exhibit of Byzantine reliquaries, said to have belonged to Helen, Contantine's mother, and the vaults of the Archaeological Museum full of Etruscan artifacts displayed in a labyrinth of vaults two stories underground where the Sienese sought refuge during WWII bombing.

We then visited the Civic Museum at Siena's City Hall, where secular government began in the early Renaissance. The halls are filled with interesting frescoes and portraits, but I was particularly interested to find the Allegory of Good and Bad Government by Ambrogio Lorenzetti, a work that represented the political ideals of the Council of Nine. The town depicted in the Effects of Good Government is Siena as Lorenzetti viewed it through a window of the City Hall.

They sky was beginning to look a bit ominous as we headed to the Duomo, a great example of the Romanesque-Gothic style in Italy. This church also offered a rooftop tour and since we had enjoyed this so much at the Duomo in Milan we decided to purchase the combo ticket that included the tour. Our tour was scheduled at 5:00pm, but a pretty good rain started to fall around 4:00pm so we headed inside the Duomo to view the interior from the ground level. Here also I had an interest in viewing a particular work of art: the Pulpit by Nicola Pisano with panels by his son Giovanni Pisano from 1268. The use of classical forms and realism mixed in with decorative Gothic lines signaled the coming Renaissance. Sadly, the pulpit was undergoing conservation and was covered up. However, there were windows in the covering and we were actually able to see a conservator working on the pulpit, which was pretty neat.

As we were killing time in the bookshop the thunderstorm outside was growing worse. After a particularly loud clap of thunder all the lights in the building dimmed and stayed dimmed. We never quite figured out if the building had been hit by lightning. We wondered if they would cancel the tour of the roof after that. Nope. And so we went outside on the roof. In a thunderstorm. Thankfully the worst of it had already passed over the building by that time, and I saw quite a few lightning rods on the surrounding buildings so I figured we'd be OK...

We made it back down from the roof alive and decided just to take a relaxing stroll around the shops in Siena. We grabbed some fast-food pasta as a quick dinner, and once the rain had stopped we found a table at a cafe on Piazza Il Campo where we had a coffee, some traditional Sienese desserts (Ricciarelli and Panforte e Panpepato), and watched the world go by.

Museum day

Today was jam-packed with Museums.

We started off our day around the corner from our B&B at the Bargello Museum. (Literally, it's one block away around the corner. A very handy, central location to stay for a decent price!) The Bargello museum focuses on sculpture, which is where the Renaissance began, and boasts the best collection of Florentine sculpture. The highlight is definitely Donatello's David, the first full-round nude sculpture made since antiquity. During the time when I was in Florence years ago, this piece was on loan to another museum so I was really happy to have the opportunity to view it during this visit!

Next we headed over to the Galleria dell'Accademia. We arrived about an hour and a half after the museum opened and already the lines were super long. With our Firenze Card we were able to skip the regular line, but we still had to stand in a line with other card holders. Thankfully our line was much shorter than the other line and moved more quickly. The Galleria dell'Accademia was designed specifically to house Michelangelo's 17-foot-tall David when it was moved from the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio in the 1800's. We all know this work is big, but I think it surprises everyone when they actually experience how tall it is in person. Having seen it before, I enjoyed watching Russ experience it for the first time.The rest of the collection displayed here was much smaller than I remembered. I think there may have been some closures (though I didn't see any indication of it) because there were only pre-Renaissance works displayed and I believe they usually exhibit Renaissance works as well.

Leaving the Accademia we crossed Piazza di San Marco to visit the Museum of San Marco, which houses the greatest collection of fresco by Fra Angelico.

I don't know what the actual translation of this sign is, but what Google translate returned was "Find medieval wall paintings under the floor." Maybe it was the exhaustion setting in, but I found this hilarious since the holes in the floors showing the underground paintings were very obvious and weren't hard to "find."

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By this time our stomachs were growling so we paused for lunch at Pasticceria Robiglio, a nice cafe with sidewalk seating for lunch and corridor view of the Duomo. It was a lovely break from the museum hustle.

Then we were back at it with a visit to the Uffizi Gallery. Here again our Firenze card allowed us to skip the regular line and, instead, join a line specially for card holders. Just as with the Accademia, this line moved more quickly than the regular line and we were inside in about 20-30 minutes. The galleries were crushed with tour groups, but we managed to squeeze in to view the highlights: Portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino, Botticelli's Allegory of Spring and Birth of Venus, and Leonardo's Annunciation.

A bit museumed-out at this point, we left the Uffizi, wondered around some shops, and headed to the Oltrarno neighborhood for dinner. We ate at a restaurant on Piazza di Santo Spirito called Borgo Antico, which had been recommended to us by a friend. Florence is know for its steak (bistecca alla fiorentina), which we had been meaning to try. Well, this was the place to try it. it was AMAZING! Probably the best steak we've ever eaten.