Piazza Navona … Panteón … and More

Wednesday, 2 September 2015
Trevi Comfortable Terrace Apartment — Rome, Italy
Temps: Hi 88F (31C) / Lo 66F (19C)

Not that it is essential — most all of the locals we encountered today spoke English — but it sure makes getting around Rome easier if you speak the language.  I don’t speak Italian; but Mui has a good conversational grasp — a carry over from when he lived in Rome for three years as a young boy.  He took advantage of our encounters with the locals to practice his Italian and get us around Rome today.

No sleeping in this morning!  Our day started early with breakfast on the terrace.  Not a leisurely one, however, since we wanted to get going and start exploring.

As this is my first time in Rome, Mui is in charge of all the sightseeing for our three-week stay — you might say that he’s my live-in tour guide.  After all, aside from having lived here for a few years as a child, he was in Rome for a week in 2011 with his mother, so the city is still “fresh” in his mind.

We put our shiny new transit passes to use to take a bus from the stop that’s a block or so from the apartment to the Della Valle stop in the city’s Sant’Eustachio District.  We could have walked there probably, but nothing in Rome is as close as it seems on the map and we wanted to save our feet for all the ‘necessary’ walking we knew was ahead of us.

When we got off the bus, we detoured from our planned itinerary briefly to visit our my first church in Rome — the Basilica di Sant’Andrea Della Valle …  the church where Puccini set the first act of Tosca.  What a pleasure it was to walk into a church where we were the only ones visiting.  And what an impressive introduction it was to Rome’s highly-gilded churches.

[Feel free to click any image for a larger version in my online gallery.]

Vault over the nave.	Ceiling detail above the altar.

From the church, we took a meandering path through neighborhood streets, stopping to take the occasional photo before arriving at Campo de Fiori [Field of Flowers].  The name dates back to the Middle Ages when this area was actually a meadow.  Today, it is home to a daily produce and fish market.

Chiesa di Santa Barbara dei Librai	Vendors setting up at Campo de Fiori.

The hour was early; most of the vendors were still setting up when we arrived.  I imagine the place is a hubbub of activity later in the morning.  We stopped long enough to check out the statue of the philosopher Giordano Bruno — burned alive in the square in 1600 for heresy.  Ironically, his statue, which stands on the spot where he was burned, defiantly faces the Vatican.

Giordano Bruno — philosopher deemed heretic — was burned at the stake here in 1600.

Oh!  And before we left, we bought a glass of pomegranate juice to share … squeezed fresh in front of us.  Delicious but a little spendy at €4 ($4.51 at the day’s exchange rate).

Fresh squeezed pomegranate juice … yummmm!

Mui was especially excited to take me to Piazza Navona next … one of his favorite places in all of Rome.  Again, the early hour worked in our favor — there were very few people around … but we were to pay for this later unfortunately.

Panorama of Piazza Navona — Chiesa di Sant’Agnese in Agone overlooks the square.

We spent a while wandering around the square, which stands where the Stadium of Domitian stood in the 1st century AD.  I was itching to go inside the church that overlooks the square, but the three fountains with their elaborate sculptures also called out to me — especially Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi [Fountain of Four Rivers] … which I remembered as being the setting for a scene in Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons.  I loved all the symbolism in the design of the fountains … but the irony of featuring sculptures of ancient gods on fountains overlooked by a Roman Catholic church was not lost on me.

Fontana del Nettuno [Neptune Fountain] was built in 1576, but the statue of Neptune
wasn’t added until the 19th century.  It stands at the north end of Piazza Navona.

The Ganges	Fountain of the Four Rivers	The Danube

Built between 1647-1651, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi has four sculptures around the base — each
of which represents what were considered the four greatest rivers of the time … the Nile, the
Ganges, the Danube, and the Rio de la Plata.  The Obelisk of Domitian, which tops the base, was moved
here in pieces from where it originally stood in the Circus of Maxentius, near Via Appia Antica.

When Piazza Navona was a stadium back in the 1st century, the good people of Rome came here to watch the games — or agones as they would have been known in ancient Rome.  Hence the name of the mid-17th century church that dominates the square — Chiesa di Sant'Agnese in Agone — has nothing to do with ‘being in agony’ … which was my uneducated guess as to the meaning of the word until I read the information panel inside the church!  That said, I imagine that St Agnes, an early Christian saint, was probably in considerable ‘agony’ when she was martyred in the aforementioned stadium.

Left: The relief on the altar was originally to have depicted the Miracle of St Agnes.  when the artist died shortly after being commissioned, a relief of the Holy Family was ordered instead.

Right: View into the dome from a side altar.

Around the perimeter of the nave are four semi-circular altars.  Each altar is
dedicated to a martyr — this one to St Alexius.  Each relief depicts how the martyr died.

The skull of St Agnes is in a shrine inside the church.

Remember how I said we later paid for the lack of crowds at Piazza Navona.  Well, we did so in a big way when we reached the Panteón [Pantheon].  It has become apparent to me that since we cannot be first/early everywhere we want to visit, each day we need to pick the site that is most important to us, go there first, and then fill the rest of the day with the other sites we’re interested in seeing.

Anyway, as we watched the crowds milling about, selfie-sticks prominently in use [they drive me nuts, by the way], we chatted with the carabinieri [police] about whether the number of visitors change with the seasons.  He ruefully shook is head and told us that Rome is pretty much overrun by tourists year round anymore.  Sigh!

The inscription on the façade honors Marcus Agrippa, the original builder of the Pantheon.
The crowds don’t look too bad in this photograph, but that’s only because I waited
20 minutes for at least three tour groups to leave before clicking the shutter.

After I snapped a few shots of the exterior, we joined the crowds inside.  My attempts at capturing a panorama of the circular interior came to naught — too many people moving by and around us to get a decent shot.  I’m going to use the photo anyway just to remember what it was like inside … I must be a masochist to want to retain this memory ;-)  At least the B&W treatment hides most of the headless and otherwise distorted people in the image ;-))

Crowds are the norm not the exception at the Pantheon, a temple that was dedicated to all gods.

This amazing — not to mention, most preserved — structure of ancient Rome has its origins between 27-25 BC.  After it was burned to the ground in 80 AD, it was rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian during 118-125 AD.  I mention this to underscore how mind-bogglingly old this structure is.  Built as a temple dedicated to all the gods of pagan Rome, it was gifted to Pope Bonifacio IV and consecrated as the Basilica of Santa Maria ad Martyres [Basilica of St Mary and the Martyrs] at the beginning of the 5th century.  That this building has been so well preserved is attributed to the fact that it has been serving as a church since then — although how anyone can worship with all the tourists coming and going in such a chaotic and frenzied manner is beyond me.  The public address system would come alive every so often, asking for “Silenzio per favore!” [Silence please!] and it would quiet down for a minute or two.  Then, the tour guides would pick up their narration; visitors would start talking over each other, raising their voices to be heard over the din.  Admonitions were to no avail.  We tried to be as unobtrusive as possible, but we were definitely amongst the few trying to respect the worshippers who were seated in a small section in front of the main altar.

Cross section of the Pantheon.  The interior height is equal to the diameter of the
dome, which would fit perfectly inside the structure were it to be inverted.

If there was one thing the Romans did well, it was to use arches to carry the weight of their buildings — in particular the domes that topped their buildings.  To take it a step further, they used heavy materials in the lower reaches of their buildings, and lighter materials — such as tufa or brick — in the upper reaches.  These concepts were applied to the construction of the perfectly circular Pantheon as well — probably another reason why this building survived so well to our day.

I had hoped to visit the Pantheon on a brilliant day to see the sunbeams coming through the oculus — the hole in the center of the dome.  I had read that when this happens, the Pantheon essentially becomes an astronomical clock and I was excited to see it for myself.  No such luck today — even though the sun did come out by the time we left the Pantheon.  Nor was I able to get a decent photo of the oculus itself — can’t tell you how much I regret leaving my ultra wide angle lens behind :-(

The oculus (left) is completely open to the elements.  What happens when it rains?  The slightly-convex floor drains the water to the 22 holes in the marble floor — four of which are shown in the photo on the right — and into the still-functioning drainpipes below the Pantheon.

Of course, I could go on and on and on with details about the Pantheon, but I’ll just direct those interested in more info to the link I provided above and just share some more photos instead.

In addition to various chapels — Chapel of the Anunciation (left) and Chapel of
the Madonna of the Clemency (right) being two of them — some of the niches around
the perimeter feature tombs, such as this one of Victor Emmanuel II, the first king of Italy.

Details from the High Altar

There were so many people in front of Raphael’s tomb that this rendering
of it will have to suffice to jog my memory of what it looks like.

A sampling of Federico Severino’s Stations of the Cross featured around the rotunda.

Eventually, leaving the chaos at the Pantheon behind, we headed off into a side street.  As the noon hour was nearing, we decided we should get a bite to eat and rest our weary feet — these cobblestone roads are a killer even with trail hikers.  On the way to the restaurant Mui had chosen for us, we came across a church — no big surprise; they are around every corner in Rome.  We decided to spare a few minutes to check it out.  The Chiesa di Santa Maria Maddalena offered the perfect antidote to the noise and crowds at the Pantheon … a peaceful sanctuary.  Unfortunately, as the mid-day closing time was at hand, our visit was necessarily brief.

Left: The Rococo-style façade of Santa Maria Maddalena was completed in 1735.
Right:  The late-Baroque and Rococo decorations inside were completed between 1698-1758.

Frescoes on the ceiling depict stories from the bible.

The tomb and relics of St Camillus de Lellis — in the highly-decorated main chapel.
He founded a religious order dedicated to the care of the sick.

Organ Gallery — circa 1773.

The restaurant Mui had chosen for our first meal in Rome was in an obscure alley near the Parliament.  Not easy to find, but eventually we found ourselves standing in front of it.  Unfortunately, the establishment was locked up tight … on vacation said the sign on the door.  So, we ended up at Ristorante Spago al Parlamento instead.  It was just down the street and the menu looked good.  Although the place was mostly empty when we took our table on the narrow platform overlooking the pedestrian-only street, the tables filled up in no time with locals on their lunch break.

After querying the waiter who assured us the pizzas were small, we each ordered one, plus a salad to split.  Hah!  We should have gone the other way around.  While the crust was crisp and paper thin, the pizza was far from small by our standards and we could have easily split one.  Lesson learned.  If I had to rate the food, I’d say it was just OK, with the pizza on the salty side.

Balsamic and olive oil for our salad; and prosciutto pizza.

We skipped dessert at Spago in lieu of a sweet treat from a gelateria touted as “the place” for gelato.  On our way there, we did a bit of sightseeing … first at Piazza di Colonna [Column Square] where the marble Column of Marcus Aurelius has been standing since 193 AD; next at Piazza di Montecitorio, which is home to an Egyptian obelisk … one of several scattered around Rome.

Left: The Column of Marcus Aurelius is decorated with a spiral relief of the wars he waged.

Right: The Obelisk of Montecitorio, also known as Solare, is an ancient Egyptian red granite
monument that was brought to Rome in 10 BC by Emperor Augustus.  The building in the background
is the seat of the Chamber of Deputies, a house of the bicameral Parliament of Italy.

Now about that gelato.  At first, we planned to take a seat at one of the tables Bar Giolitti has on the street and leisurely enjoy our gelato … do some people watching, too.  When we studied the menu, however, every order seemed to be topped by a mound of crema [whipped cream], which neither of us wanted.  Blame it on jet lag or whatever that we didn’t think to ask if we could get our order without the whipped cream.  Instead, we decided to get a couple of cones to-go.  I will say that the gelato was really good, but the servers dishing it out behind the counter were abrupt to the point of rudeness.  Had we not already paid for our gelato, we probably would have walked out.  It’s doubtful that we’ll be returning to Bar Giolitti anytime soon.

With our feet crying for mercy, we slowly headed back home and literally crashed.  We took advantage of the fast-speed internet at the apartment to check emails, and in my case, upload some “PostCards” to get a quick blog post up.  Then, once the sun moved off the terrace, we adjourned there with our adult beverages and munchies to wrap up our second day in Rome.

I’m going to mention the weather once … and unless I write about it again to say that it has cooled down, you can simply assume that it continues to be hot and humid.  You know how they say women don’t sweat, they glisten.  Well, I’m here to tell you that is so untrue!  I’m so glad we have a washer and dryer in the apartment.  I was able to throw a load of wash in while we relaxed on the terrace, and now everything that got soaked with sweat as we wandered around Rome is fresh again.

Tomorrow, we have an early day planned outside the city … better get to bed and get my beauty sleep.

[More photos from today are in my online gallery.  Oh, and by the way … I’m delighted with the performance of the Fuji X-T10 in low light conditions.  Most all of the photos inside churches were taken at ISO 1600 to 3200 … and the noise is negligible to non-existent.  On the other hand, I regret not bringing my ultra wide angle lens on this trip … I really could have used it today, and I imagine I’m going to feel the lack of it all through the trip.]

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