Nearby Piazza Navona is everyone's favorite square in Rome. In ancient Rome this was a stadium built to entertain Romans with non-bloody athletic events. Again, the Romans failed to understand the point of entertainment that didn't end in death, so the stadium was soon abandoned. The abandoned site was then transformed into a beautiful piazza in the sixteenth century as a cornerstone of a resurgent Rome. The old stadium outline is still clearly visible, but is nowadays lined with Renaissance palaces and wall to wall outdoor cafes. The centerpiece is an elaborate fountain by Bernini, and the rest of the area is filled in by hordes of tourists, locals hanging out, and "artists" offering to paint your portrait.



We had lunch at Tre Scalini, the most touristy of the many tourist traps in the piazza. We sat outdoors with a large German tour group, ate mediocre food delivered by stressed waiters, enjoyed the energy of the handsome square, and finished it off with some great ice cream. Food-10, Decor-14, Service-8.

The interior is covered in intricate, vividly colored marble, and looks to be about twenty years old rather than two thousand. Its amazing vitality is all the more surprising when you note the huge hole in the middle, necessary of course in pre-electric times to let in light, but it's unbelievable that two thousand years of rain and pigeons wouldn't have done some harm to the interior decor.

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.

There is one church on the piazza that was actually built for religious reasons, Santa Maria del Popolo. Nero's ashes were buried on this site, which the superstitious Romans came to believe became haunted by Nero's ghost. In 1100, the pope performed an exorcism of the site, and to reinforce the effect, had this church built on top of the previously haunted site. The church became a favorite of the aristocracy, who added elaborate private chapels to the main church where they could worship apart from the hoi polloi. They tried to outdo one another in the extravagance of these chapels, making the church the repository of a wealth of Renaissance art.

On our last day in Rome, we finally got around to exploring our own neighborhood. The Piazza del Popolo was the only entrance to Rome for over a thousand years. Via del Corso was (and still is) a broad avenue leading directly from here to the ancient Forum. In the middle ages, the the pope added another avenue to the right, from the piazza directly to the Vatican. Of course now it was assymetrical, so a subsequent pope completed the arrangements with a third avenue on the left, leading to the Spanish steps. Once symmetrical, an ancient Egyptian obelisk was added in the center of the piazza to emphasize the newfound balance, and then getting even more carried away, two small, perfectly formed churches were built behind the obelisk to give it a proper backdrop. These two identical churches are still in use, despite the fact that they were only built to decorate the piazza.



The piazza was the center of Rome's famous carnival held annually for over a thousand years. Highlights of the festivities included a series of races down the Via del Corso, including a riderless horse race, and a pretty horrific event involving the kidnapping of elderly Jews from the ghetto, who were then forced to eat huge amounts of food then race to the forum.

Crossed the river one last time to the old Roman neighborhood of Trastevere, Rome's answer to Brooklyn. This area is supposedly the authentic Rome, whereas the rest of the city has been yuppified and globalized so much that it's lost its Romanness. Of course you'd have to be a true Roman to notice this, so for the tourist it's just another neighborhood to explore. It's got a couple of sights to take in, but mostly it's famous for cheap cafes and restaurants that attract the rest of the city when looking for a good night out.



Santa Maria in Trastevere is the big landmark, and possibly the city's oldest church (I think I've said that about four different churches now). There's been a church here since around 220 AD, although the current church dates from the eleventh century. The mosaics inside are the main attraction, although actually the very pretty square in front, lined with outdoor cafes and neighborhood kids playing, is even better.

Ile St. Louis is my favorite part of Paris, so I was looking forward to visiting its Roman equivalent, Tiber Island. But beyond their both being islands, they don't have much in common. Tiber Island looks dramatic in the aerial photo, and is connected to the river banks by two pedestrian bridges, the oldest of Rome's many bridges. In Ancient Rome, there was a temple to Aesculapius, the Roman god of healing, and naturally attracted the city's sick in search of a cure. Over the centuries this was formalized into a hospital, which is flourishing today. It's doing so well that it now occupies the entire island, and its undoubtedly interesting medieval parts are buried in a sea of modern medical buildings. Needless to say the quaint streets of Ile St. Louis are more captivating than Tiber Island's waiting rooms and maternity wards.

We continued our river walk south of the Forum, in one of the oldest parts of Rome. This area is where the bulk of Romans worked and lived during the empire, and it's littered with dozens of ruins from that period. It gets very few tourists because the ruins are spread out and surrounded by the modern-era city, so it's a bit of a chore to see them. And for the most part they're rather small so there's no particular reason to try to see all of them. But it's one of the most interesting parts of Rome to wander around, because around every corner there's an unexpected surprise waiting. Perhaps the biggest surprise is the largest ruin in the area, the Theatre of Marcello. The theatre was started by Julius Caesar, and was to be the preeminent venue for live theatre performances. Unfortunately, the Roman public couldn't care less about bloodless drama, so the shows quickly degenerated into the usual bloody carnage to compete with the Colosseum. During the Middle Ages the theatre was converted into a fortress and fought over by the Colonna and Orsini families. More surprisingly, the ruin is now an apartment building, with some very fashionable apartments.

We then walked south along the river to the Janiculum, Rome's largest and least important hill. The fabulously wealthy Chigi family bought this hill and built their palace on the banks of the Tiber. They were a banking family, and scored a coup by grabbing the papal accounts from the Medici of Florence, who made their fortune by financing the popes and received the Grand Duchy of Florence in return. The Chigi just received money, but unfortunately by the time they were banking the popes, they were decidedly less creditworthy, and eventually the popes reneged on their debts. Our friends from a few posts ago, the Farnese, bought the Chigi estate, renaming it Villa Farnesina. The Farnese now had elaborate palaces on both sides of the Tiber, but unfortunately the river made it inconvenient to move between the two. So, the family, unencumbered by zoning commissions and historical societies, simply built a bridge over the river connecting their two palaces. The bridge has faded into history, and the Villa Farnesina is now a museum. Only a few rooms of the palace are open, but they are covered with frescoes from some of the Renaissance's greatest artists. The hill behind the palace is now Rome's botanical gardens.

,

The photos are some of the perfect views from the top level of the castle. In one of the photos you can see an aqueduct running from the castle to the Vatican. That's actually a popeaduct, as its sole purpose is to house a raised passageway connecting the Vatican palace to the castle, enabling the pope to flee to the greater protection afforded by the castle during all the riots and invasions.

Since the popes spent alot of time here, the interior, which was previously focused on housing and torturing prisoners, evolved to a sort of palace, albeit with no windows and really thick walls. One practical note to visitors; the only public bathroom is on the entry level at the roof, prior to descending through the many levels of the palace to the eventual exit. So go before you start the descent, or you'll regret the very long backtrack.

Hadrian had his mausoleum decorated with elaborate artwork and sculptures. Unfortunately not much of this survives, chiefly because the popes decided to make this their personal fortress, and hightailed it here whenever the going got rough (which was often, because in the years from 500 to 1500 AD, Rome experienced an invasion or rebellion on average every two years). The statues, which were made by the empire's best sculptors, were used as artillery in 527. Surrounded by invading barbarians, the pope ordered his soldiers to cut down the statues and hurl them at the barbarians below. The strategy worked apparently as the barbarians fled the deluge of statuary.

Perhaps to get a better view of the heretic burnings, the area around Campo di Fiore became the hot real estate market of medieval Rome. The two ancient families of Rome, the Colonna and Orsini, lived in compounds closer to the papal palaces. These families maintained huge armies of thugs to terrorize each other and the popes, and of necessity had to build heavily fortified palaces near the center of power, the pope. However, as the papacy descended ever further into corruption and farce, many nouveau riche papal families diverted huge sums of the church's money to build lavish palaces in this area. The Farnese family rose to prominence by setting their daughter up as Pope Alexander's mistress, in return for 16 bishoprics. When Alexander died, the mistress's father became pope, which in the middle ages was like winning the lottery. The result is the lavish Farnese Palace, the pink building in the photo (and also the interior shot). Unfortunately it's now the French embassy so you can't see inside. The other photo is of the nearby Palazzo Spada, which is now shared by the Italian government and an art museum. The Spada family never grabbed the gold ring of the papacy, but they did get several cardinals, which was good enough for a pretty nice place.

For dinner we picked up another Michelin star, La Terrazza dell'Eden. The Hotel Eden, the pink building in the photo, is close to our hotel, around Via Veneto. It's a top hotel, but seems a bit dated to me. The rooftop restaurant is probably the most glamorous in Rome, and the only one requiring a jacket a tie. The room is classical and fairly characterless. The view is fantastic, with all of Rome spread below you. Too bad the brilliant architects put such a low ceiling on the room, and even narrower windows. It's a very animated restaurant, mostly Italian businessmen on expense accounts (that has much better connotations than an American restaurant full of businessmen, though, due to the much greater Italian flair). Did the full four course gutbuster of a meal, and enjoyed the scene and the polished service. Food-16, Decor-11, Service-17.

After Rome burned in AD 64, Nero decided to use the tragedy as a real estate opportunity, building his new palace over one quarter of the charred remains of the city. As per the previous post, he built a lake where the Colosseum now stands, and a huge statue of himself. The thousands of room were covered in gold and jewels, perfume was sprayed from the ceiling, the dining room rotated for no particular reason, etc. etc. You get the general idea. Despite the over the top grandeur, the palace was used mostly for orgies and torture. When Nero killed himself only two years after the palace was complete, subsequent emperors abandoned the place to put distance between themselves and the hated Nero. The city grew over the palace and the whole thing was forgotten until a wing was accidentally uncovered during construction in the fifteenth century. This discovery caused quite a stir among Renaissance artists, as it was crammed full of classical paintings and sculpture more advanced than anything being done at the time.



Unfortunately all the good stuff has long been stripped from the place, so what you're left with is a large number of huge, empty brick rooms. To make matters worse, only a few people are let in each day, and you've got to take a long, boring guided tour of the bricks. Historically important, but quite a bore.

The church of San Clemente is probably the most interesting in Rome, with layer upon layer of religious history and works of art from almost each of the last twenty centuries.

The story begins in the crumbling alley in the picture, part of the ancient Roman city that burned while Nero famously fiddled. The somewhat less spooky next level is a temple to Mithras built by Roman soldiers on top of the charred remains of the old city around the year 200 AD. The adherents sat in the chairs lining the wall, and shared communal suppers on the white altar in the middle, while behind this room is another where boys were taught the complicated details of the religion. When Christianity became the state religion, a Christian church was built on top of the Mithraic temple (the plain white windowless building in the photo). This church was then burned by the Normans as part of the general destruction of the neighborhood in 1084, whereupon the stunning presentday church was built on the rubble. The current church is decorated with some of the best mosaics in Rome, plus some relics of the earlier church.