The Holy See

For our first full day in the "Eternal City," Diana and I went to the most fabulous place in Rome--the Vatican, also known as the Holy See.  The Vatican is located outside the city walls, across the Tiber River via the Ponte Sant'Angelo, or "Bridge of the Holy Angel."  Anciently there was a circus here where, according to legend, the Apostle Peter was crucified upside down and later buried.  The central altar in the crossing of St. Peter's Basilica is directly over his tomb.

This is the old bronze pine cone that once crowned a fountain in the atrium in front of St. Peter's.  It is one of the few ornaments that survives from the old church before it was completely redone during the Renaissance and Baroque periods.  The Vatican is such an interesting place.  It is its own city within the city of Rome.  In fact, it is also its own country, ruled by the Roman pontiff, who once controlled many more lands than just the grounds surrounding St. Peter's.  It has its own stamps and even its own money, although Euros are accepted if you want to buy a souvenir!  We saw nuns on pilgrimage, priests showing their parents around, and of course many, many tourists.

Unfortunately, Pope Benedict XVI was at his summer residence, and so we didn't get to see him!  I think, though, that the third window from the right on the lower story is his study.

We waited a long, long time in line to get into the Vatican Museum.  I think it's hard to find a time when you don't have to wait in line to see the painted corridors of the old papal palace, magnificent paintings, precious liturgical treasures, tapestries, some of the most famous ancient Roman statues and sarcophagi, and the Sistine Chapel.  Diana got us some gelato to eat while we waited in line, standing against the massive fortress walls of the Vatican.  The walls slope inward, which is pretty comfortable for the back!  This is a picture of the largest courtyard in the museum.

An ancient carving in the collection.

This sarcophagus carved from porphyry once held the remains of St. Helena, the mother of the Emperor Constantine.

Here I am with Emperor Augustus.

One of the most stunning things about the Vatican Museum is the painted barrel vaults over long palace hallways illuminated with windows.  The Baroque era loved optical illusion, and sometimes we would come to archways that were twisted at strange angles, hung with fake curtains, or which made a flight of stairs look longer than it really was.

One corridor was painted with maps of different sections of Italy and other parts of the world.

The Renaissance popes had various rooms in the palace painted with fresco by artists like Raphael.  Here is his famous School of Athens.  After walking through what seemed like miles of rooms and galleries, Diana mused on the injustice of museums.  How unfair, she thought, that a magnificent museum like the Vatican has so much art that it has to relegate hundreds of paintings to basement rooms that no one ever visits.  She pointed out that there are tiny museums in other parts of the world that would give anything to have just a few of the Vatican's rejects!

We eventually got to the Sistine Chapel where there were guards that continually hissed at the packed crowd of tourists to be quiet and not take pictures.  Yet this never seems to stop the tourists.  Diana and I saw many people secretly taking snap shots of the ceiling when the guards weren't looking.  I'm proud to say that we admired the brilliant colors of the chapel without taking a single picture!  Your neck sure starts to hurt after looking up at the ceiling for so long, though!  We walked to the museum exit by way of cabinets filled with medieval ivory carvings, chalices, and the painted vaults of the Vatican Archives.  We saw paintings by Raphael, Leonardo, Caravaggio, Fra Angelico, as well as beautiful, gold-leafed devotional panels.  Then after leaving the museum, we entered the piazza of St. Peter's through Bernini's colonnade. 

This colonnade, crowned with images of the saints, extends from either side of St. Peter's facade like the arms of the Church, reaching out to embrace the faithful.  That was Bernini's idea in designing the structure--it was like an invitation to all those Protestants who had defected from the Roman Church during the century before.  When Diana and I were there, the piazza was decorated with images of Pope John Paul II, who had been beatified just two months before.

There was a fabulous exhibit chronicling the life of this heroic pope.  I've always admired John Paul II very much.  Diana and I saw memorabilia from his childhood, drama posters from the plays he was in back in Poland, vestments he wore during his papacy, a video of the assassination attempt on him in St. Peter's Piazza, and videos of the "pilgrim pope" visiting the nations of the world and kissing the ground of each country as he exited the airplane.  I was especially moved by a series of video clips showing the last of his weekly blessings from the balcony above the main entrance to St. Peter's.  John Paul II would never miss these weekly blessings, but towards the end of his life he was so infirm that he had to be taken to the balcony in a wheelchair where he would look out at the people and try to speak.  Often he would just move his mouth, unable to form words and obviously in great pain.

Diana and I made our way to the entrance of the largest church in the Christian world.

My pictures do a terrible job recreating the overwhelming space inside St. Peter's.  Everything is covered in colored marble and mosaic with massive statues and rays of light falling down from the dome.  Bernini's bronze baldacchino covers the altar over St. Peter's grave, where only the pope can celebrate mass.

Here is a view of the altar with the marble banister cordoning off the stairs leading down to St. Peter's tomb.

And here is the famous statue of St. Peter, supposedly made from the melted-down bronze of the cult statue of Jupiter that once stood in the god's main temple on the Capitoline Hill. 

Millions of people have reverently touched the foot of St. Peter over the centuries, and today the bronze is shiny and gold-colored, with all his toes worn away.

We heard about half of a Latin mass being celebrated at the high altar of St. Peter's.  Bernini's spectacular sculptural group was lit for the service, which was really nice.  The four fathers of the Western Church lift a bronze throne containing a real wooden chair that is venerated as St. Peter's original bishop's throne.  Above, golden clouds, angels, and rays of light stream down from heaven.  There is a stained glass image of the dove of the Holy Spirit at the apex of the composition, illuminated with real light from the sun.

We walked by the tomb of Pope John Paul II, now located under an altar in the nave of the basilica.  Nearby was the chapel containing Michelangelo's Pietà.  

Rome's churches contain the bodies of hundreds of saints.  Some of these are known as "uncorrupted saints" because their bodies have not decayed, a traditional sign of sanctity.  They are usually located under the altar in a glass sarcophagus.  Often, though, you find images of the saints under altars.  These are just supposed to remind you that the body of the saint is buried beneath.  Sometimes I find that it is difficult to tell if it is an image or an uncorrupted body of a saint!  This is one I can't tell on--it is Blessed John XXIII, who reigned as pope during the 1950s and early 1960s.

We saw some Swiss Army guards while we were in the Vatican.  They have been the guardians of the pope for centuries.

We left the Holy See by crossing over the Ponte Sant'Angelo.

Bernini designed the angels at the end of his career in the later part of the seventeenth century.

Here is Diana on the bridge, looking back toward Castel Sant-Angelo, the Roman emperor Hadrian's mausoleum. 

 It was later reconstructed into a papal fortress dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel.

And here is a nice view of the Ponte Vittorio Emmanuele II, another bridge leading across the Tiber to the Vatican.

We went walking through a typical Roman neighborhood along the Tiber with narrow cobblestone streets, tall buildings with large wooden shutters, mammoth doors, and with the walls painted deep gold and terracotta.

We got some phenomenal gelato at a little gelateria that Diana's friend had recommended--ginger, pistachio, fig, and white peach.  There is not desert like Italian gelato!

Continuing on, we walked by the tiny, but beautiful piazza of S. Maria della Pace, redesigned in the mid seventeenth century as part of Pope Alexander VII's massive urban renewal project.

And we stumbled into Pasquino, a terribly deteriorated piece of ancient sculpture that has been the "voice" of Rome for centuries.  People make anonymous criticisms of the city and engage in political debates by attaching notes to Pasquino.

It was getting to be evening when we arrived at Piazza Navona, a beautiful open space in the heart of Rome with Bernini's famous Fountain of the Four Rivers and Borromini's towering facade of Sant'Agnese in Agone.  Diana and I got some dinner at another little trattoria.  You can never go wrong with pasta in Rome, and that's what we got.

The fountain and the church were lit at night.

And on our way home, we walked by the Pantheon.  The unbelievable thing about Rome is that the same city that has the Vatican also has the Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, the Roman Forum, and a host of other things.  What city in the world can compete?  Diana was pretty amazed by the towering silhouette of Hadrian's temple dedicated to all the gods, and we stopped to take a picture in the dark porch of the Pantheon.  Here is Diana flanked by colossal Roman columns.

The Eternal City

Before I returned to America, my sister, Diana, and I had planned to go to Rome for a few day.  We left for Italy on the Fourth of July, and if I hadn't been on my way to one of the most fabulous cities in the world, I would have been a little sad to be missing barbecues, fireworks, and parades in the USA.  The day before, though, Rachel, Diana, some of her friends, and I had celebrated with a barbecue.  Diana had the amazing idea to discreetly drop a package of tea in the fountain of the Trinity College courtyard as a symbolic reenactment of the Boston Tea Party and a subtle assertion of American pride in a sea of English academic aristocracy!

As the airplane began to descend into Rome, Diana suddenly said, "Is that St. Peter's?"  And sure enough, there was St. Peter's Basilica rising majestically from Vatican City.  Then we saw Rome's cathedral, the Basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano, the curving band of the Tiber River, and a little above it was the Coliseum!  Rome is probably my very favorite city, and I was so honored to get to be Diana's tour guide on her first visit!  For me it was the third time to visit Italy's capital with its peerless collection of baroque churches, pilgrimage shrines, and ancient Roman monuments.

Diana and I had found a nice place to stay nearby one of Rome's greatest churches, the Basilica of S. Maria Maggiore, the first major church dedicated to the Virgin Mary.  The first two pictures from this post were of \S. Maria Maggiore, and this one is of a statue of the Madonna and Child commissioned by Pope Paul V in the early seventeenth century and placed on a column outside the basilica.  After we dropped off our bags, Diana and I went for an evening tour of some of the marvelous sites in the city, beginning with S. Maria Maggiore.  Legend tells that in the fourth century there was a snow storm on the Esquiline Hill on August 15th, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin.  The pope interpreted the blizzard as a heavenly sign and traced the ground plan of the basilica in the newly-fallen snow.  I've been told that every year on August 15th S. Maria Maggiore commemorates the miracle by dropping thousands of white rose petals from the ceiling of the church.

From the Esquiline, we continued on to the Quirinal Hill.  We walked beside the dramatically curving facade of Borromini's monastic church of S. Carlo alle Quattro Fontane squeezed into the corner of a tight intersection.  Just a few steps further was Bernini's masterpiece, the Jesuit novitiate church of S. Andrea al Quirinale.

Rome has piazza after piazza, many of them with an Egyptian obelisk, fountains, and grand buildings.  This is the Piazza del Quirinale where the palace of the prime minister is.  From the piazza we could look out over red roof tiles and parchment-colored buildings to see Michelangelo's dome of St. Peter's against the sunset.

We descended a steep flight of stairs and made our way through a maze of narrow streets to the Trevi Fountain, which was full of tourists.  There is a church that opens up onto the Trevi piazza, which I have been told contains the hearts of many of the deceased popes.  There is certainly a European tradition of burying the heart of a king or noble in a different location than the body, but I'm not sure whether it applies to the popes.

Then we walked to the Piazza di Spagna, which was also swarming with tourists.  There is a great staircase leading to the Church of S. Trinità dei Monti with an obelisk at the top.  At the base of the stairs is an interesting fountain of a sinking ship designed by Bernini's father.  There were venders selling glow-in-the-dark Frisbee things that they spinning up into the air.  The people selling roses are particularly pushy--sometimes putting a rose in your hand in an attempt to get you to buy it!

Here is a close-up of the Church of S. Trinità dei Monti, illuminated with white lights against the dark evening sky. 

 Diana and I walked back to the Trevi Fountain neighborhood to eat at a little trattoria specializing in spaghetti dishes.  It was really delicious--nothing like eating wonderful pasta in Rome!  The only thing that would have made it nicer is if they would have just given us free water.  Both Diana and I get a little tired of always buying bottled water in Europe when we would both be fine with water from the tap!  The green bottles do make the picture look more elegant, though, don't they?!

London Markets

On Saturday I rode the train to London where my sister Rachel was doing an internship for a few months.  It was only an hour-long ride from Cambridge, but the British rail service is very expensive!  Rachel met me at the train station with an itinerary of things for us to do.  We started out by going to the famous Borrough Market, an outdoor smorgasbord of delicious things to eat from all over the world.  Lucky for us, they give lots of samples.  This is a picture of assorted baklava at the Greek food stall.  I love baklava!

There were so many fabulous things to try--roasted tomatoes, mushroom pesto, pepper jellies, Turkish delight (we felt like Edmund in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), honey, fig preserves, and Indian curry.  This is a picture of the ostrich meat stand with ostrich burgers and ostrich steaks.  We didn't get a sample there!

A number of people were cooking huge vats of curry, stew, or meat, and you could buy a hot lunch and eat it right there at the market.

From the cement floors and makeshift tents of the Borrough Market, Rachel and I went to Harrod's, an unbelievably expensive department store palace--a place so prohibitively pricey that I think its entire clientele must be tourists who just want to buy a souvenir from London with a Harrod's label on it.  Maybe the queen gets her groceries there.  Or perhaps J.K. Rolling.  But not many other people could afford it!

Here is an example of a typical room in Harrod's.  Don't be deceived by the red "sale" signs you see on the wall.  A sale at Harrod's still makes you choke when you see the price tag.  You certainly pay for the elaborate packing, the artistic wrapping, and the chandelier light illuminating the food products.

Here are some pastries.  There were also quasi-restaurants in some of the rooms, including a dim sum bar.

Here is the fish counter.  They also had caviar you could buy, that is, if you had made a trip to the bank just before and had brought the bills you had withdrawn in a suitcase!

Rachel and I rode an Ancient Egyptian-themed escalator up several flights of stairs and saw a boulder-sized rock crystal that you could purchase as a decoration for your house.  The only thing was that it cost as much as a small house!  Furthermore, you'd practically need a moving van to transport it anywhere.  This chandelier was tens of thousands of pounds.  Rachel and I were wondering how often Harrod's has to make a sale in order to stay in business ... not very often, I think.

After getting some ice cream on crêpes, we went to the British Museum so that I could see a wonderful exhibition there.  It was on devotional art and relics from the Middle Ages.  Sounds like it was designed just for me, doesn't it?  They had wonderful reliquaries in gold, silver, ivory, and wood, as well as a "true image" likeness, a type of portrait that is believed to miraculously capture the exact features of Christ or the Virgin Mary.  I was especially intrigued to see some examples of Anglican relics--fragments of blood-stained cloth and locks of hair belonging to Charles I, the unfortunate seventeenth-century king of England who lost his head.  I was surprised to learn that the Anglican Church had canonized him--the only saint the Church of England has ever canonized, in fact.  However, Queen Victoria later overturned the canonization.

Towards the evening, Rachel and I rode the subway downtown.  Here is a picture of the fabulous Neo-Gothic Parliament building.

And here is one of its towers, proudly waving the British flag.

Big Ben.  You can almost imagine Peter Pan, Wendy, Michael, and John landing on the minute hand as they pause to look out over the city of London before continuing on their flight to Never Never Land.

Rachel and I then walked over to Westminster Abbey so that we could attend evensong.  Usually it costs quite a lot to get into Westminster Abbey, but if you go there for evensong you not only get to hear beautiful music in a reverent worship service, but you also get to see a good amount of the church as you walk to your seat--all for free!

We walked along the imposing buttresses of the north side to reach the west facade.

And here are the towers guarding the western entrance.

People often get Anglicanism confused with Catholicism, and there certainly are a lot of similarities.  The Church of England, however, has its own way of doing things.  I've always been interested by the way it negotiates all the historic Catholic churches, Catholic holy sites, and Catholic traditions that it became heir to after the reformation of Henry VIII.  For instance, saints don't play nearly as big of a role in Anglicanism as they do in Catholicism, but the Church of England has kept up the tradition of decorating the exterior of its churches with saints.  I've noticed, though, that Anglicans often mix together traditional saints with people that have never been canonized as saints, even though they did very great things.  You sometimes find statues of Protestant reformers alongside St. Francis of Assisi--and no pope ever canonized Martin Luther, I'm fairly certain!  Sometimes you even find "saints" who weren't Christian--Mahatma Gandhi, for instance.  Here at Westminster Abbey, I was interested to see Martin Luther King above the door--an inspirational leader and tremendous force for change, but an unusual companion statue for the medieval nun, St. Elizabeth of Hungary, standing beside him.  If I remember right, there was a statue of Albert Schweitzer up there, too.

Evensong was beautiful.  We were sitting not very far from the "poet's corner," where famous poets are buried and memorialized.  After the service, we walked down the aisle where the queen and royal family had been just weeks before for the royal wedding and made our way to another church--the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Westminster.  I got a lamb and mint Cornish pasty on the way.  Westminster Cathedral is a cavernous Neo-Byzantine building, built during the nineteenth-century, I believe.  After Henry VIII abolished the Church of Rome in his realm, there were no high-ranking Catholic leaders in England until the nineteenth century when the Vatican sent Cardinal  Wiseman to England to serve as archbishop of London.  British Anglicans panicked, thinking that the pope was going to try to take over their country, but things have calmed down in the last century and a half, and the Catholics and the Anglicans get along well now.  Mass was going on inside, and so Rachel and I had to move discreetly from chapel to chapel in the side aisles, looking at the sparkling mosaics and not making noise.  We headed back to the train station afterward and rode back to Cambridge together to stay with Diana.