Youth hostels weren’t meant for us scholarly types. Dance music is blasted from 10 to midnight. People are loud and obnoxious, and my room is full of girls getting ready for a night on the town. Still managed to sleep 12 hours the first night, having not slept in two days.
Anyways, Day Two had much better weather than I expected, so I declared it my day to do the Vatican. To get there I walked, as I did to any place in the city. Taking the Metro would have made me miss a ton of cool stuff (again, there’s Latin written EVERYWHERE). So my route over to St. Peter’s took me by the Pantheon, a temple to all the gods built by Agrippa, Augustus’ right-hand man, then rebuilt by Hadrian (who rebuilt pretty much everything), and then converted into a Christian basilica, which explains why it’s in such good shape, and decked out in all splendor in accordance with apostolic poverty…
So began my day in Dan Brown country. It was hard to keep Angels & Demons out of my head when I stared up into the oculus.
A couple blocks hence was the beautiful Piazza Navona. Little known fact is that the piazza conforms to the shape of what used to be there, the Hippodrome of Domitian. The highlight of this spot are the two beautifully sculpted fountains on either end.
After resting there I approached the Tiber River. It was a spiritual experience to walk down the steps from one of the bridges and to wash my hands in the sacred river. I crossed it over a bridge full of angel statues and ended up at the Castel St. Angelo, Hadrian’s tomb, but was converted into a medieval fortress (I’ll have pictures of it in a later post since I returned to it on Day Four). From there was a short walk to St. Peter’s Basilica, which by the way is MASSIVE.
I waited in a line a short while since they have airport-style security at the entrance. First thing I did was to climb to the top of the dome (tickets for stairs were cheaper than the elevator). The ascent seemed endless, but the view at the top was well worth the exertion.
From there I got to walk around the roof, to discover that there is a GIFT SHOP on top of the holiest church in all of Christendom. It was run by nuns, and I bought a rosary for my sister. She wanted one blessed by the pope, but since they didn’t smell like sauerkraut, I assumed he was nowhere near them. The fact that it was daily hanging over His Holiness’ head is sufficient to say it’s worth more than the plastic rosaries they make in China.
From the roof was a descent into the interior of the church. The place is as massive as it is magnificent. Latin written all over, endless statuary and shiny ornamentation. Only drawback was that it lacked in the pipe organ department. However, my father is a pipe organist and he said that St. Peter’s, if you can believe it, is too big an acoustic space for such instrument!
St. Peter’s is a shining example of the belittling effect a cathedral is designed to have on a tiny, insignificant human being who needs the fear of God struck into him. When I left the place, I discovered a convenient little place called the Vatican post office, where I could buy stamps and postcards and mail them out all in the same spot. I sent a postcard to my girlfriend Stephanie and to Julie Goell, my roommate’s mother who went to school in Italy and gave me copious advice on how to make the most of my stay in Rome. Multe grazie, Giulia!
The next logical thing to do at the Vatican is to see its spectacular museums. There I saw countless antiquities and Renaissance art, including my favorite painting of all time, Raphael’s “School of Athens.” I took longer staring at this very large mural than I did at the Sistine Chapel ceiling (partly because the guard in the latter place kept yelling at everybody to keep quiet and to not take pictures).
The museum took most of the day to get through, and not a single part of the place isn’t worth checking out. This was by far the best museum I’ve ever seen, and may stay that way.
It was getting dark when I exited Vatican City and made my way back into the middle of town, where I stumbled across the Theater of Marcellus and a brightly lit up Temple of Apollo the Healer. From there it was dinner time (8 PM in Italy) so I found a little Sicilian trattoria tucked away near Trajan’s Column. I got Pasta alla Salmone and it was multo bene. So ended Day Two, which because I wasn’t sleep-deprived and cranky, I’d say was my favorite day.
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