Rome, DAY 2, Friday, June 20, 2009

This was the day to visit the Vatican. The advice to take the guided tour was graet advice. There is quite a crowd waiting to enter. The guided tours get preference. Our guide was amazingly knowledgeable. The museum is full of Greek art and other fine items. The Sistine Chapel was everything that was promised. Michelangelo does noce work. The chapel was wall to wall people. Guard shush the crowd trying to maintain some reverence to the sacred space. There re signs and all tourists are told no pictures allowed. Flash is forbidden through the museum. Despite the rules, people were snapping multiple shots some with flash in the Sistine Chapel. The tour continued to Saint Peters Basilica. Endless art, history, and relics fill the space.
In the evening we decided to walk through Rome starting at The Spanish Steps. The historic significance is minimal. The steps were built just to connect two churches. From there it’s a short walk to the Trevi fountain. (Three coins in the fountain.) This place attracts a crowd. Everyone fights their way up to the rail to get their photograph with the fountain as a backdrop.
Our last stop was the Pantheon. Now this place is something. It’s over two thousand years old and is still one of the largest dome structures in the world. We caught a free tour. The guide was an American around thirty years old. He told the story of the structure from the Romans to the Catholic Church to the Italian Monarchy. The Romans built this without anything but manual labor and concrete.
The top of the dome is about 300 ft to the top. The designer used decrease the all thickness and density of materials from the bottom from the top. So after 2000 years there are no visible cracks in the sphere.
The Romans and later the Italians stole from the ancients. The columns the support the portico in the front came from Egypt making them 3000-4000 years old. They are made from on solid piece of granite. How did they make these columns? Each is 40-50 tall, one piece, perfectly round and smooth. Amazing! Just cutting the rock from the quarry is a feat. The front was once decorated with bronze until a pope needed it to decorate the Vatican. Later to protect the Pantheon, another pope converted in to a church. This was the practice which also halted the stripping of the coliseum. The lions and Christians story was created to rationalize the founding of the coliseum as a holy site.