We spent our last Roman afternoon wandering around Campo Marzio, whose medieval winding streets makes for great walking. The church of Maria Sopra Minerva, with the sky blue interior, is a popular stop, its gothic interior a rarity, as Rome's sights tend to be either ancient or renaissance, with a thousand year gap in between while gothic flourished in the rest of Europe. Rome also has the coolest stock exchange in the world (also pictured), with the modern exchange decorated with seven huge pillars from an ancient temple.



We took in one last art museum as well, housed in the stunning palace of the Doria Pamphilj family (ornate hallway in the photo). The family had a terrible reputation, based on the way they amassed their fortune. The family made their money the usual way, by winning the papacy via pope Innocent X, who promptly outdid his predecessors in the amount of church wealth diverted for his family's benefit. Notwithstanding his unparalleled efforts to enrich his family, they were hardly loyal to their benefactor. As the pope lay dying, his extended family ransacked his palace, stripping everything from the place, not just the art and jewels, but all the furniture, dishes, clothes, everything. They left him in an empty palace, with just one bronze candlestick in his room for light, which his servants stole. The family then refused to pay for his burial, and his corpse was left in a toolshed behind the house. Nowadays, the family is firmly in the upper echelon of society, and they still own the palace and the art collection, which is probably the most attractive art museum in the city.

We then meandered south through the Campo Marzio. In really ancient times, this was a vast field used by the Romans as a boot camp, training their young soldiers to take over the world. As Rome grew, the field shrank, getting covered with temples, houses and shops. When the barbarians finally put an end to the empire and sacked Rome, they also cut the aqueducts, stopping the flow of water to the city. The few thousand people left to wander around the defeated city eventually congregated in this area, in a bend in the Tiber river, so they could at least have access to some water. For hundreds of years, this small village of survivors, plus the pope and his retinue, was all that was left of Rome, and it remains the heart of residential Rome even now.



Its most famous landmark is the Pantheon, the best preserved Roman ruin in the world. It was built around 100 AD as part of a huge entertainment complex, but only this temple survives. It was converted into a church around 600, which explains why it was allowed to stand rather than get ripped down for building material. Incidentally, the small piazza in front of the pantheon, though tourist central, is very pretty and a nice place to stop for an espresso.