56. Rome 6

I'm very excited as this weekend I'm doing something I've never done before... stay overnight in Rome!  I've calculated that I've been to Rome at least 5 times, but always on those dreaded whistle-stop day trips where you have to rush around to see as much as possible in about 3 hours!

It's A 7 am start for our 3-hour drive down to the Eternal city. We arrive and park right outside the walls of the Vatican city.  Being a huge Michelangelo fan, one of my dreams is to see the Sistine chapel, but after 5 visits to Rome, I'm beginning to wonder if that's ever going to happen... We try the museum first, but as usual the queue to get in is about 3 million miles long! And it closes at 1.30pm! We agree that it would be useless to join the queue now and decide to come back tomorrow, early!

It's a short walk around the corner to the monumental St. Peter's square, which always takes your breath away every time you see it. Next, we wander over to the Castel Sant'Angelo and along the Tiber river. We're looking for the Tourist Information Centre, which is somewhere near the station. Of course we must find a hotel if we're going to stay the night. They suggest a place just outside the centre near Via Salaria. It's close to an Underground stop which is useful.

Tonight there is a big football match, Lazio vs AC Milan and as Clayton is a big football fan, we're planning to see it. We pick up the car and stop off at the Stadio Olimpico to see if we can find some tickets. The stadium is part of the huge Foro Italico complex, which was built by Mussolini and hosted the 1960 Olympic games. We manage to buy some tickets for only 15 euro each, that's about 10 pounds!

After a short drive to our hotel, the Villa Spada, which looks clean and comfortable we have a well earned, rest after our considerable walking... Annette decides to stay at the hotel for the evening, they have a dinner and dance night, far more civilized than being with rowdy football hooligans!

We head back to the stadium for the 8 o'clock kick off. We find somewhere fairly safe to park and join the throngs of crazy local Lazio fans all dressed in their sky blue. Surprisingly this is my first live football match in Italy, our local team, Fiorentina are having financial difficulties and are not doing too well. AC Milan as usual have a great team, Maldini, Rivaldo, Seedorf, Rui Costa, Gattuso and Pippo Inzaghi. With the added excitement of new aquistion, Nesta, who is playing his first game against his old club! Lazio have Peruzzi in goal, Claudio Lopez, Mihajlovic and Simone Inzaghi.

The game itself is fantastic. There is a great atmosphere with colourful flares, firecrackers and fans going crazy! We are sitting with the Milan fans and are being bombarded with coins and plastic water bottles! A little dangerous for some of the kids present...
Milan score first with a Maldini header and Lazio equalize in the second half for a 'safe' 1-1 draw. We stop for a late night pizza in a bowling alley and then make our way back to the hotel.



The Vatican Museums

Sunday am and we check out of the hotel at 7.30am! A little early for Annette, but then this morning we are on a special mission... Sistine Chapel! We drive back to the Vatican, arriving at around 8 am. Already the crowd is sizeable. We find the end and join it to see what happens... Finally it starts moving and after only 2 hours, we're in! The entrance is free as today is a special day of culture in Italy. The problem is, we have 17 museums to get round in three and a half hours!!! Obviously going to be impossible to visit all of them, but anyway I'm here to see the Sistine Chapel first, anything else will be a bonus. To make no mistake I head straight for the sacred chapel, which Annette has seen before, what a culture vulture! Clayton says he will go at his own pace and meet us in there. So I'm rushing through coridoors of masterpieces without looking, just to make sure I get to see the Sistine Chapel. And finally I'm there... after years of looking at pictures of it and reading about it I'm finally standing beneath it, in the flesh... And it doesn't disappoint. The ceiling was restored between 1980 and 1994 and the newly discovered colours are dazzling. The ceiling is lower than I imagined and therefore closer to the eye. It is an unbelievable sight. For me, the greatest work of art ever created. Every single figure seems to be alive and breathing, in colours as fresh as the day Michelangelo painted them into the plaster. A shame I can only spend an hour or so soaking up this magnificence. Eventually we tear ourselves away to check out some of the Museum's other masterpieces. 

The next 'must see' is the Raphael room. Here I also get to see one of my favourite frescoes, the School of Athens, which is actually frescoed on a whole wall and is part of a three wall cycle including the Parnasus and the Disputation of the holy sacrament. Again breathtaking, as master painter, Raphael, has skillfully arranged personalities from the classical world on a fantastical staircase, giving them the faces of his contempories, Leonardo, Michelangelo and even a cheeky self-portriat!

 http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/SchoolAthens.htm

After checking out the Apollo Belvedere, which is a sublime marble copy of an original bronze by Leochares, a couple of other pieces I must see are the Belvedere Torso and the famed 'Laocoon.' This is the Greek marble group which was rescued out of the Tiber river in the 15th century, both pieces inspired the young Michelangelo. The Belvedere Torso is easy to spot in a wide corridoor and very impressive, the Laocoon a little harde to find. I eventually spot it in a small alcove... Wow!  Laocoon was a Trojan prince, who was responsible for the proverb we know today as 'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts' He warned the Trojans of accepting the wooden horse, but was ignored... For this, or some other indescretion, Poseidon or Athena had him and his two sons killed by two huge Serpants. This is the subject of the marble group attributed to three sculptors from the island of Rhodes, Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus. I can see how Michelangelo was inspired on his eternal quest to produce the perfect male torso...

Suddenly our Vatican experience is over... What a sin to put 17 museums together and have opening times of 9.30am-1.30pm!!! One of the frustrations of Italy...

http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MV_Home.html

We meet up with Clayton for lunch on the run and have the rest of Rome to see this afternoon. We take the Metro to our next stop, the Colisseum.  I think the best way to first see it is walking up the steps of the Metro, kind of like a Gladiator's view. I remember seeing it this way for the first time many moons ago... Usually I just look round the outside, I've never been inside. Seeing as it's a day of firsts and the entrance is free, we all go in and catch a guided tour.

It turns out to be very interesting, as the enthusiastic guide tells us about those crazy, egotistical Emperors and their silly shennanigans.

We walk down the broad Imperial way, past the Forum up to Piazza Veneto and the very out of place white Vittorio Emanuele monument and on to the Trevi fountain where we stop for a very 'touristy' afternoon Cappuccino! (don't tell my Italian friends!) and soak up some Rome atmosphere...

Our last stop is the Spanish steps, before heading back to the car and our 3-hour drive back to Chianti.


(Original journal entry 29/9/02)

15. Pitti Palace

I always think it kind of amusing when I here somebody say they can 'do' Florence in a day! Ok so one only has so much time for holidays and there are so many other places to visit, but Florence in one day?  When I was here on holiday for two weeks, apart from everything else, I only visited 3 of the 70 museums in Florence! (and that's without counting special and temporary exhibitions)

However now that I'm living here, I have the opportunity to see some of the things that only residents, students or those holiday makers who stay in Florence for longer than a day, ever get to see...

After 18 consecutive days of sun in Tuscany to start the year, a 5 day trip to drizzly England for my Nan's funeral, it's time to recover with some art of the heavyweight variety!

Here, at the one time residence of the Medici, Napoleon and King of Italy... The Pitti Palace.

The brainchild of merchant banker Luca Pitti who in true 'keeping up with the Jones's fashion', wanted a palace to rival that of his sworn enemies the Medici family and their Palazzo Medici. Pitti died before it was finished and ironically the Pitti Palace was bought by Eleonora Toledo, wife of Cosimo I de' Medici and eventually came to be in possession of the Medici familly! Today the Pitti palace is the largest museum complex in Florence with 7 museums (containing 140 rooms which are open to the public) plus the Boboli gardens, the largest garden in the city. 

We visited Boboli last June in sweltering heat and I've walked past this enormous palace on many ocassions, but today I have about 4 hours free between lessons and the temptation to look inside is too much! Once through the imposing exterior it's into the colossal 'Ammananti' courtyard with no less than 4 enormous statues of Hercules. Here a copy of the Lyssipus bronze, but with the transposed head of Emperor Commodus!

Today I'm only visiting the Palatine Gallery as it houses works by some of my favourite artists, Caravaggio, Canova, Titian and  Raphael. The Palatine gallery is separated into about 30 rooms, named after Greek Mythological characters and there are around 5oo Renaissance paintings and some sculptures.

There are no less than 13 paintings by Titian here, his  young Englishman, or 'the man with blue-green eyes' and 'La Bella'  (above) were both mesmerising in their beauty.  

Raphael is well represented here with 11 paintings. This portrait being probably the most interesting piece in the museum. Nowhere near as famous as Leonardo's Mona Lisa, but many think, showing a striking similarity. Nothing prepares you for seeing the luxurious colours and soft beauty Raphael embues in this ideal portrait of womanhood, the identity of whom, like the Mona Lisa, remains a mystery. One is drawn to the warmth and love of this painting and cetainly you are able to get a lot closer to it than the Mona Lisa! 

My favourite piece here was Canova's gorgeous sculpture of Venus, called 'the Venus Italica' looking rather shy as she seeks to cover her nudity. You can see the Greek influence of this neo-Classical sculpture and in fact it was originally comissioned to replace the Medici Venus stolen by Napoleon and taken to the Louvre, but since replaced in the Uffizi. "When I saw this divine work of Canova," wrote the poet Ugo Foscolo in 1811, "I sighed with a thousand desires, for really, if the Medici Venus is a most beautiful goddess, this is a most beautiful woman."  My thoughts exactly! I definitely want to check out more of his work in the future.

  

A final piece was this dark 'Sleeping Cupid' by Caravaggio, I saw a Caravaggio exhibition in London a few years ago and this is his first piece I've seen in Italy. Painted in Malta towards the end of his life, with its plump, life like flesh, laying aside his bow and arrow he displays an abandonment of worldly possessions. Worth staying more than a day in Florence? I think so!

(Original journal entry 30/1/02)