Trevi Fountain Works!

Yesterday’s trip to Roma was amazing…I’m not even going to try to describe it all. We in no way tried to see everything in the city in one go, since we’ll be back multiple times throughout our stay here. It was great though, I saw a good deal that I’d missed the last time I was in Roma.

We had to get up really early, which was a pain because we had gone to a party that some of the local bars put on jointly every now and then…but it was definitely worth going, because we made some Italian friends! There’s a British woman here who’s about the same age as us (she’s teaching English as part of her study abroad time at university), and she’s friends with a fair amount of the locals. Her name is Hilary, and apparently last semester she got to know Matt and our RA Laura Menichetti, so she found us pretty early on. Anyway, she introduced us to a lovely couple, and we got invited to come have apperitivi with them when we got back from Roma.

When we did all drag ourselves out of bed yesterday morning and headed down to the train station at 6.30 to catch the train into Roma, we had no idea still what we were going to be doing. While on the train, Matt revealed that our itinerary was a stop at the Palazzo Massimo of the Museo Nazionale, a bus trip to the Pantheon, and then walks through the Forum, Colosseum, and ending at the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. The latter I was really excited about seeing, because it’s been in every art history anthology I’ve laid hands on, and it contained a mosaic of Abraham meeting Melchizedek about which I wrote a paper last semester.

I was unprepared for the Palazzo Massimo museum, though. We entered and Matt gave a long preamble about how we were about to see his favorite artwork in the entire city, and then we walked into…the Underground Garden Room from the Villa of Livia a Prima Porta, which is also in a bunch of my textbooks. The room is amazing, realistic frescoes that open the space into a garden filled with fruit trees and birds. I sat and stared around me while Matt talked about it and its roots in Greek painting, and the sophistication it contains…it fades into blurred background, so that you can almost feel and hear the buzzing humidity of the verdant forest all around. But words fall short of describing it.

I was also unprepared for what was downstairs: the famous bronze statue of the Roman Boxer, and even more unbelievable – the Via Labicana Augustus! I love seeing these things in person, and knowing as I stare up at them that there is no way I can comprehend the gravity of the situation.

From the museum, we saw the Pantheon, had lunch and gelato (at an incredible, old-fashioned style bar), walked around the Forum (sadly, you have to pay to go in now...I'm glad I saw it two years ago), relaxed next to the Colosseum, walked by St. Peter in Chains, and ended up at Santa Maria Maggiore. It was awe-inspiring, gold and mosaics and paintings and marble everywhere in a blend of styles spanning thousands of years. Throughout the trip, Matt was careful to not inundate us with information, he gave us just the right amount for optimum absorption, which I really appreciated.

When we got back Hilary texted me to invite us to apperitivi after dinner, so after we ate a small group of us went back to Caffe Cavour to hang out with Hilary and her friends. Not long after we walked back to our rooms to watch half of Roman Holiday, and then hit the sack.

This morning was our second mass at La Chiesa di San Giovanale, the church on the other end of town that's over a thousand years old...up until this point I thought that St. Peter's Basilica in Rome was the most impressive church I'd seen, but the humility of the tufa walls mixed with the broken frescoes has inspired me more than any other place of worship. I love worshipping there.

Ciao for now!