Roman Holiday

The Vatican Museums are crazy-huge. And they're crammed with the most amazing stuff from all corners of the globe. This pine cone is from ancient Rome and the lions are Egyptian. So basically, they just took things from all different cultures and religions and incorporated them into Catholicism.


This is one of the many endless hallways of miscellaneous marble sculpture in the Vatican Museums.

And this is THE LOACOAN. The most famous Hellenistic sculpture. Ever. The story of this sculpture is that Laocoan attempted to warn the people of Troy to not accept the giant wooden gift left outside their gates by the Greeks. As punishment for this effort, Athena sent snakes to strangle his sons.
Notice the slightly different color of Loacoan's right arm. It was found by an archaeologist in an antique store in Rome in the 19th century. Before it was found, they thought his arm was extended straight. The copy of this that was made in the Renaissance has the arm attached the wrong way. It's in the Uffizi.

And the Belvedere Torso that inspired Michaelangelo to change the way he sculpted and painted forever.

And this is just a giant bird bath that the Ancient Romans made for decoration.

And Raphael's School of Athens where he sneakily painted portraits of his friends.

And the inside of St. Peter's Basilica, which is basically big enough to fit all other churches in.

And the outside.

We went to a delicious restaurant and Piazza Navona to see the fountain of the four rivers.

And the Coliseum, which is incredible every time you see it.

In the Arch of Titus you can see his soul being carried to the heavens by an eagle.

Mussolini's window:

Victor Emmanuel's building with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

The metro in Rome is only 1 euro, which is great, but it also doesn't run very many places. Probably because it's crazy difficult to dig underground in Rome without discovering something and then having to turn it into an archaeological site. So a lot of the metro trains just outside the city are aboveground, including this rather creatively graffiti-ed one.

Saturday night Ashley and I stayed in Ostia, which is a seaside town outside of Rome and we ate delicious sushi and watched Gladiator in our hostel in honor of our day in Ancient Rome.

Sunday we went to the National Gallery of Modern Art, which is right near the Borghese gardens, They are so pretty. And the weather was incredible; we were so overdressed.

It was pouring rain when we went into the Pantheon. It is seriously mind-blowing to see the rain fall through the Oculus. You can stand right underneath it and not get wet. I attempted to capture it with a video: