The history in Rome was amazing. You would walk down a totally normal street and at the end of it there would be something magical. I took 500 photos so below you will see about 50 of them.
These two photos were in Riga. Even though we got stuck overnight, the next day was beautifully sunny. You can see the USSR style buildings behind me.
This is from the bridge we crossed everyday on our way into the center city. In the background is St. Peters Basilica which is truly ever present on the city landscape.
I never actually figured out what the name of this building was but it's pretty magnificent.
We tried to go to a flower market in the Campo de Fiori but we walked into a real market. All the fruit looked so delicious.
This column was about 100 feet high and had 360˚ carvings all around it. It was absolutely magnificent!
In the same group of ruins as the column were the remnants of this building. The figures on it reminded me of the movie Hercules so I included them for fun.
This arch is right outside the Colosseum. We eavesdropped on a tour and the tour guide said each of the carvings were scavenged from other buildings. I have no idea how the Romans could have done this but it is really beautiful. In a museum we went into, there was an old painting of what we think was this arch during Roman times and it was in water. It could have been like that 2000 years ago.
These photos are all from the Roman Forum. I don't know a whole lot about each of the buildings because we couldn't afford to pay for a tour but it is pretty cool to imagine what the roman city must have looked like. There were aqueducts, baths, air vents for the baths, castles, and gardens. In the garden there were orange trees and all the oranges from the bottom had either fallen or been harvested. I shook a few trees and this orange fell down for me. Sadly it was over ripe and we could not eat it. It was a victory all the same.
Can I just say that the Colosseum is absolutely as spectacular as it looks in these photos. It is completely unbelievable that 2000 years ago people built this colossal stadium.
These two photos are of the Church Sopra Minerva (or something close to that). One thing that you could never do is see all the churches in Rome. I maybe visited 5. They were all beautiful
Right next to the church is the pantheon. I actually walked around the back of the Pantheon and thought the ruins hadn't been excavated yet. Wrong. When I walked to the front I realized what I had found. Sadly, like just about everything in Rome, it was Catholicized. Oh well, I could appreciate it as a temple to the Gods of ancient Rome.
This is the Piazza del Popolo. There is a road from here straight to the Vatican. You can see St. Peter's Basilica in the background of the bottom photo. Up where I'm standing in the bottom photo is a big park and you can walk to the Spanish steps from here. Overall, the Spanish steps were not the most magnificent thing I saw but this Piazza is beautiful.
I visited the Trevi Fountain 3 or 4 times, sometimes on accident, sometimes on purpose. It was so beautiful. I think the photos speak for themselves.
This was the Piazza Navona. Mostly I just liked the fountain with the man spiking the squid. The church here was quite beautiful as well.
This is Michelangelo.
I also visited the Vatican 3 times. There was plenty to see and I could have spent all day inside St. Peters. The Sistine Chapel was closed for conclave but just the church itself was pretty magnificent. My photos don't really do it justice.
This paint is leftover probably from when it was originally done. I just couldn't believe how in tact it was.
This church had a meridian line down the middle of it. I took a photo of the dome and tried to capture some of the colors on the stain glass. I kind of succeeded.
This castle was one of the biggest ones I'd ever seen. We did not pay to go inside but there was a bridge going from it to the Vatican. Totally awesome. I am standing on another bridge with about 6 or so statues like the one depicted.
No comments:
Post a Comment