Rome is a large and beautiful city, and there was even more to see on our final day there.
We started the day near the Vatican again, this time going into the Vatican museums. It's a series of hallways with art, artifacts, and of course, murals on every wall and ceiling. There were some moving pieces of art depicting different biblical scenes.
The Sistine Chapel is one of the rooms in the museum, and it was not quite what we were expecting after visiting all the cathedrals in Italy. It is just a room about the size of a typical fellowship hall at an American church building. It had a raised cieling, and a wooden divider in the middle that went about 1/2 way to the ceiling and divided the front of the chapel from the back. The room was void of any furniture, and in America only about 150 people maximum would be allowed in at a time. There were at least twice that many when we went in, and it was the off-season. The only impressive features in the room are the murals on the walls and ceilings. The ceiling is the famous fresco by Michaelangelo depicting the creation and fall of man. On one wall are scenes from the life of Moses, and on the opposite wall are scenes from the life of Jesus... in parallel. It was an interesting teaching moment in itself, to see someone else's perspective on the historical significance of the life of Moses in God's plan for true salvation through Christ.
We then took the metro down to the southern part of the city to St. Paul's Basillica. I almost enjoyed seeing this building more than St. Peter's because there was no crowd, and I felt I could sit and contemplate the art, history, and architecture involved in the building. Inside the cathedral was a monument standing on what is supposedly St. Paul's burial site. There were large murals on the front wall above the altar area, and on the sides in the smaller chapel areas. The main part of the building was filled with marble columns. All along the walls above the columns were pictures of every official pope there has ever been. An interesting thing we noted is that they only have room for about 7 more pictures, and then they'll have to think of somewhere else to put the pictures. The entire cathedral was already covered with them.
The southern part of Rome was a lot dirtier than the central, east and west portions. Presumably they have newly renovated the metro and improved the other areas because they are bigger tourist spots.
We then walked back towards the central part of the city so that we could see more of the Roman ruins.
For dinner, we again ate Turkish Kebabs and got dessert before returning to the hotel and crashing.
I have to say that Rome was my favorite place we visited on our whole vacation.
1 comment:
When the Chorus went to Europe in 2002, we spent nearly half of our time in Italy. One of the places we stopped was St. Pauls, and when we arrived there, we were the only people in the building. Since we were alone, Dr. G. decided that it would be okay for us to check out the acoustics, or maybe someone asked and Dr. G. said okay... Anyway, however it came about, it was pretty exciting - after all, how many people can say they performed at St. Pauls, yakno? So we started in on one of our latin pieces (I forget which one, now) out of respect for it being a Catholic basillica, and we'd barely even gotten started when a couple bus-loads of Japanese tourists walked in... You know the type - khaki shorts, black socks, five cameras around the neck... :-P They, of course, quickly crowded around us thinking that we were part of the experience. As we finished the song, they applauded and tried to convince us to sing more, but since we were only singing b/c we were alone, Dr. G. had us just kind of break up and fan out.
That was one of my favorite experiences of the 2002 tour... Crazy, but so fun :-D
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