Day 25 – May 10 Tuesday

A late start this morning, breakfast in the hotel, a day planning session, then out the door by 8.45am.  We walked straight down Via Cicerone towards the river & the nearby Piazza del Tribunali, then walked along the riverbank to the Castel Sant’ Angelo, a very impressive & imposing building.  As we walked around it the Piazza Giovanni opened up to a magnificent view of the Basilica of St Peter – now that was an impressive sight.  We decided not to head there as we will be seeing it on our tour & headed instead across the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele (bridge) over the Fiume Tevere (river).  The statues on the bridge are amazing, so many, so much work, so good, so much traffic.  We headed up towards the Pantheon & passed through tiny alley ways, classic small Rome streets, classic Roman houses & got to the Piazza Navona, full of painters selling their artwork, another big fabulous fountain & another big church.  On the way from there we passed the Palazzo Madama, an impressive big old palace now a government building surrounded by police & soldiers.

A bit more walking & we arrived at the Pantheon, my goodness, what a huge building this is, the facade is amazing, so tall & imposing & built 1,900 years ago – amazing it’s still standing.  We went inside & the height of the oculus (round hole in the roof, 8.3m diameter) is 43m above the floor – a long way up.  The building is round inside with an ornate marble floor, a central altar surrounded by minor altars all around the walls.  The tombs of two Italian kings are on opposite sides from each other, the other tomb of interest is the painter Raphael, in a plain stone sarcophagus.  The massive doors are made of bronze & must be so heavy.  This building is really impressive, inside & out.  While we were there the sun was shining through the oculus with a round light on the base of the dome wall.  Out of the Pantheon & past the Templo Adriano to the Via del Corso, where I made a wrong turn & we ended up at Palazzia Venezia & were looking at a stunningly beautiful white building, the Monumento Vittorio Emanuele.  We could see the Coliseum in the close distance, so we had gone the wrong way, so I dragged out the map & we headed back up the Via del Corso for a couple of blocks before making the correct turn off past the Trevi Fountain.

The next impressive building we came to was the Palazzo del Quirinale, it was surrounded by lots of police & soldiers, facing a large square that looked out over the city, with the obligatory large fountain & Egyptian obelisk.  We kept on going up the Via del Quirinale, past the San Carlo Quattro Fontane & got to the Porta Pia, an impressive marble gate that was once incorporated in the walls of the city.  We turned at the Porta Pia & followed the big old walls down along the Corso D’Italia before turning off to the Villa Borghese – our destination for the day.  We arrived around midday & went straight to the ticket booth under the front stairs to collect our tickets for the 1pm viewing that I had pre-purchased in Australia over the internet before we left, lucky, the next available tickets were for the following Saturday.

The Villa Borghese is set in the gardens of a very big park & was built by a Cardinal in the 17^th century to house his private collection of works of art, given to him by his uncle, Pope Paul V.  To this he added to & ended up with one of Rome’s richest art collections.  The villa looks good from the outside, but its when you get inside you realise the full splendour.  Every ceiling is very high & vaulted & painted with the most amazing artworks.  The floors are all marble & all the walls are marbled & painted decoratively & hung with some magnificent artwork, mostly with a religious theme (he was a cardinal).  The gallery is spread over two floors with the magnificent marble sculptures spread out over the two floors & throughout the various large rooms.  Some of the marble sculptures are absolutely amazing, they are so talented the way the stone is brought to life.  We were also very impressed with the small mosaic artwork.  There were three small mosaics, the tiles were the size of a pinhead, you can’t imagine the time that went into them, they were really very good.  The others that impressed were the inlaid marble mosaics, these were exceptional works of art, different coloured marble, cut precisely into shape in such fine detail, the artist was extremely talented.  Our two hour time limit just flew, luckily we managed to see it all.  We rested on a seat outside in the shade in the garden before deciding where to go next.

We wandered down past the Rome zoo in the Villa Borghese gardens, went past an Italian National Day display of Police vehicles, new & old, then to the Villa Giulia.  This villa was built by Pope Julius III for hedonistic pleasures in the 16^th century.  These days it is a museum full of Etruscan treasures unearthed in Italy during excavations of ancient Etruscan cities & tombs from the 8^th to 3^rd centuries BC.  The collection is very extensive & set over three floors.  There are lots & elaborately decorated pottery, lots of bronze cooking items, weapons & jewellery, the jewellery collection is amazing.  The fine artwork & elaborate design of the jewellery is extraordinary.  The collection would make a modern high end jewellery designer envious, it really is very good.  After another hour or so looking through this museum our feet & legs were getting very tired, so it was straight home to the hotel.  Out with the map, working out the shortest path, back across the river at Ponto del Risorgimento & eventually back to the Cicerone Hotel – very tired feet at 7.30pm – a very big day.  A long hot bath was in order.  We crashed & didn’t even bother with dinner.