Archive for July, 2007

Well, we made it to Venice (Venezia). But, I’ll save that trip write up for another day. Tonight, we’re taking a night off from walking and relaxing in our hotel room, playing with their internet (for 4 Euros an hour).

So now, I want to write about our time in the Vatican. We ended up visiting Vatican City (the smallest country on earth!) at least once in some form on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday.

On Sunday, it was to see St Peter’s Basilica. This was our first introduction to the conservative Catholic area, and it was interesting. The architecture was incredible, as you’ll see in our photos. The place was huge, and the detail was stunning. Wow. The church was quiet, even with thousands of people filling it, and sunlight filtered in from airy stained glassed windows through the humid air. We saw Michalangelo’s original Pieta, though none of my pictures turned out for all of the crowds in the way. The frescoed ceilings were awe-inspiring, and the sculptures and paintings gracing the walls were masterpieces, each and every one.

But, and I hate to say this, the signs of sexism in the Catholic faith are not so subtle. I was physically stopped before leaving the security gate (a hundred feet before the door to the building) until I put my shirt on covering my shoulders and upper arms. True, the rule is the same for both sexes, but it really seemed to be unevenly enforced on that hot July Sunday. While I saw plenty of men walking around in shirts with no sleeves, or shorts hitting at the knees, any woman with ruffles instead of sleeves was physically stopped or escorted from the premises. I saw one little girl (probably 9 years old) pulled away from her family because her knees were showing under her skirt!

At noon, we spilled out into the square with the other two thousand people in the area to wait for the Pope to emerge and bless the crowd. Right on time, he stepped to the window, and went through a quick blessing in Latin. The calls and responses were shown on the jumbo-tron TVs around the square, and everybody cheered and screamed and chanted like they were at a Purdue football game.

After the blessing, the Pope said a little something in several languages. “And to the pilgrims here today who speak English!” Followed by hysterical cheering by the English speakers. I think for us he said that regardless of our sects, as Christians we should all work together for peace. He also said a message in Spanish, French, Italian and German. And he sounded as though he spoke all of the languages fluently and familiarly.

The Vatican Museum (and Sistine Chapel) were closed that day, so Mark and I headed off to other adventures. We showed up at around 11am on Monday to see the museums, but the line was, actually, over a mile long. It wrapped around two full sides of the country! We waited for about 45 minutes and then gave up and headed back to Rome.

Tuesday we got up early, and when we arrived at around 8:30a, the line was quite a bit shorter. It only took 2 hours to get us into the museum. I haven’t posted the shots from that day yet, but there weren’t a lot. Flashes were strictly banned in many areas of the museum, and the one time I tried to get out my tripod, I got yelled at in Italian.

The museum had an incredible collection of ancient Egyptian, Roman, Greek and Etrusian artifacts. I really enjoyed these sculptures. Of course, the museum is known for it’s huge amounts of renaissance art, and we saw tons of it. We saw graphic depictions of the martyrdoms of most major saints: crucifixion, upside-down crucifixion, burned at the stake, drawn and quartered, shot full of arrows (St. Michael seems to be a favorite far and away), bitten by poisonous snakes, tied to an anchor and dropped in the ocean, beaten with sticks and tied to a brick and thrown in the ocean, and Mark thinks he saw somebody eaten by dogs.

The Sistine Chapel was amazing, but as I stared at it, I started to get angry. There are 4 women represented among the hundreds of male figures. One is, of course, the Madonna. Another is the pagan prophetess Sybil, whom Michalangelo painted with a very masculine body, several times on the walls. The others are Eve in the garden of Eden, and the snake giving her the apple. Yes, the snake has the tail wrapped around the tree and the body, head, arms and breasts of a nude woman, handing the apple out to her sister Eve.

It’s not pointed out in any books or by many tour guides, but the differences in the representation of women between ancient ‘pagan’ art and the classic Christian scenes is, well, day and night.

One more quick post from Rome. We are hopping a train to Venice tomorrow, so this might be my last night with internet access for a little while.

I’ve managed to resize and upload all of the photos from our first day in the city. They are up in the gallery now. That’s a lot of shots from one day’s wanderings, but they are probably the bulk of my picture-taking so far, as well. Many of the museums here don’t allow any photography at all, and my giant camera is not something I can sneak out for a shot or two. Too bad, but it makes me remember to look at the world around me as well. I’ve spent so much time “framing”, sometimes I forget to just look.

The ancient city center in Rome is really fantastic, and I hope you enjoy all of the shots of old stuff. This was all from Saturday. We left the apartment at around 11am, and managed to loose track of our two other travel companions within 10 minutes. That seems to be the way it is around here. If you’re not physically tied to a person, expect to loose them every time you walk into a new building. It wasn’t a big deal, as we had a plan for the day, and could all meet up at the apartment in the evening.

We probably walked 20 miles that day. I learned that the city was supposedly founded around 700 BC (relatively recent compared to ancient Greece and Egypt), and that architecture for the first 700 years or so was mostly concrete faced with brick. Thus the oldest buildings and ruins are not marble, but stacks of very well-laid bricks. We saw the Trajan Markets, the Palatine Hill, and the Colosseum that afternoon, all of which are large brick buildings.

The Romans did not face buildings with granite or marble very much until the first century BC, which is the time of the republic, and in 44 BC (when Caesar declared himself emperor and dissolved the senate) became the age of the Empire. So, we also saw plenty of columns and marble ruins about in the “Forums” area. Beautiful carvings, worn away statues, and delicate reliefs littered the grass of the area. It’s weird walking through there. There’s no fence or gate, or any designation that this area is any different than the city government offices that are built next door. Just a lot of old columns sticking out of the ground, and the occasional tablet with Greek letters chopped into it peaking out of a clump of grass. People were sitting in the grass around the ruins, and plenty of them were sitting on the old statuary. There’s so much old stuff around in Rome, it just doesn’t seem to phase anybody any more.

The shot below is probably my favorite from the day. We found this cave behind an iron gate below the hill which holds the houses of various Caesars and famous ancient Romans. The trickle of water from the top made a lovely echo in the quiet chamber. The built up minerals on the walls looked like the insides of many of the old caverns we have in the US. I’ve never seen stalactites hanging from stone carvings before this. It was beautiful.

Well, it’s been a busy first three days! I’ve finally gotten the internet to work, so I was able to upload just a few pictures to the gallery. Enjoy!

So far, Mark and I have had a ton of adventures. We’ve seen amazing (and some disturbing) things. We’ve been lost on the subway, confused about busses, and probably walked over 20 miles. We’ve been blessed by the Pope, and through ancient pagan ruins. I’m learning Italian. I’ve used a bidet. And Mark’s favorite part so far: the macaroni and cheese (and bacon) dinner at the fancy restaurant next to the Pantheon.

More later!