As Rome is what Colin is most looking forward to, I am handing this section over to him.
We were given a view of the main courtyard before having all of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel explained to us.
There is quite an incredible story behind these along with the stories the paintings tell. The end wall painting depicts quite a few of the prophets of the time, an example of one of these details is one of the prophets is depicted as holding his own skin. As the story goes, this prophet was skinned alive in public before being killed. Michelangelo has captured this and has super-imposed a self portrait of his own face onto this skin. There are many other details like this throughout. Others featured as being quite special were Michelangelo's depiction of the Last Judgement and the Genesis.
You aren't able to take photos in the Sistine Chapel itself so I took a few pics of the reproductions we were shown when the paintings were being explained to us.
These all give a very good idea of what the Sistine Chapel is like itself. The paintings in the chapel are amazingly vivid and brightly colored, having just undergone a 20 year cleaning process to remove 500 years of candle grease and soot. A lot of people believed the painting was being touched up such was the difference the cleaning made. So they have left 1 square metre uncleaned so you can see the difference and it really looks like a big black square.
No photo's and silence required in the chapel so the 20 minutes in there were used to sit, gaze and ponder once again the enormity of where we were and what we are seeing let alone the enormity of the work that had gone on here in creating this marvel.
From there and still in the Vatican City, we moved to St Paul's Cathedral. This is said to be the longest cathedral in the world, and believe me it is enormous, photo's just do not do it justice. Right around the top of the dome, there is text written and each letter is 2 meters high. Looking up from below it is hard to put this into perspective.
There is so much to see here like the sculpture of the virgin Mary holding Jesus following his crucifixion. She has such an adoring look on her face as she grieves for her son, all the while believing this was God's will. This is one of the few sculptures completed by Michaelangelo, this one done when he was just 23 years old.
Further on there are some brass grates that you can look through down into the crypt below. This is where many (but not all) previous Pope's are buried.
Another incredible point about this cathedral is that all the paintings here aren't paintings at all, they are mosaics created using tiny pieces of appropriately coloured marble. These pieces of marble are their natural colours, none of them are artificially coloured in any way. The guide said that these mosaics can take 10 years to create.
Us with David & Beth
Following this and a few more photo's from the front of the Cathedral and we went off for lunch before touring some of the roman ruins.
First call after lunch was the Colloseum. Now the cathedral and Sistine chapel were old at 500 years old, but the Colloseum built between 72AD and 80AD is mind blowing. I really enjoyed seeing this and is the highlight of his trip so far. I wanted to spend more time there.
The Colloseum is a ruin and is only about 60% complete. This is not because it has fallen apart, but after the popularity of the sport (fights and killings) that went on here waned, there was a free for all allowing the people of the time to remove the marble from the complex. In addition to this there were huge iron bars holding the slabs together. These were taken in the middle ages from many parts of the Colloseum. Nevertheless it still astounds just what an engineering feat this was, just how big it is, what went on here all those years ago and the fact you are amongst something that is almost 2000 years old.
After the Colloseum we made our way to the Roman Forum, along the original cobbled roads, again these are 2000 years old, and while they may have worn down a little, you are still standing there looking at stones, the very same stones looked at and walked on by the Romans. You can't help wondering if they were able to return, just how familiar they would still find these surroundings.
The Roman Forum is where the Senate debated the laws and trials were held. These were mostly buried by dust and soil over the many years and work still continues as evidenced by the cordoned off areas with archaeologists working on the site. Back to Janine now.
Our tour finished at that point and for those of us heading out to the Pope's summer residence, Castello Gandolfo, we were taken back to the hotel for a brief freshen up before heading off on a 30 min bus ride up into the hills.
The Pope prefers to summer away from the heat of Rome and this is his residence. It sits atop a volcano, one assumes inactive, and overlooks the crater lake. The view was spectacular and once again there were souvenir shops available.
Following this we were taken to a very traditional local restaurant and treated to another 4 course meal. Did I mention we will need to be on diets when we get back?
The owners provided the evenings entertainment, the husband playing his accordion and the wife, with a beautiful operatic voice, sang to us. One of the waiters was wearing a T-Shirt saying "Sorry for last night". He was only young, so I asked him what had he done. Not so hot on English, he went to get his colleague who explained to me he was a "very bad boy" and they both smiled at me and winked!
Fortunately the night finished relatively early so it was back to the room to pack and try to get an early night. Off to Sorrento tomorrow.
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