Rome, Italy - December 8-15, 2011

Trip to Rome, Italy - December 8-15, 2011

The flight from Philadelphia took 7.5 hr with a dinner of cheesy penne pasta and then a sweet roll before landing. The plane was an A330 which must have been a recent version since we seemed to have just a little more knee room and the TV screens were larger than older versions. We did watch the movies Cowboys and Aliens, Rise of the Planet of Apes and the last Harry Potter plus Janis watched Solaris too. We landed about 8:30 AM and went through customs which took just a couple of minutes and was very perfunctory. The customs agent barely opened our passport and the waved us through. She didn't even stamp it nor enter anything into a computer. (We did though have to show our passports at the hotel and they registered us with the police – it’s the law in Italy.) The airport is about 17 miles west of central Rome on the Mediterranean coast and so we didn’t get to see much from the air on the way in. One negative is that the shuttle to the hotel cost about $53 plus a $6.50 tip. There wasn’t an obvious tourist info booth nor bus service. Also, the train or metro was probably cheaper but the closest stop to our hotel was about one mile. It did take a long time to get to the hotel by limo since the freeway ends before Rome and it was all busy local roads from there and in central Rome the streets are very winding, narrow, busy, and it was often necessary to dodge people. The trip back to the airport was even more expensive since we used the hotels service to arrange transportation – it cost about $81. And going through U.S. customs at Philadelphia was a nightmare. We had a 1.5 hour layover between our flight from Rome and our flight to Charlotte but the plane was 1/2 hr late (10 ½ hr flight) and then it took 40 minutes to get through customs and another 30 minutes to get through security. We were told that it often takes hours to get through customs in Philly. Fortunately US Air got us on a 9:05 direct flight to Knoxville

We stayed at the Hotel Abruzzi which was very nice and clean albeit small. The shower was extremely small and difficult to even turn around in. The staff persons at the front desk were very nice and friendly and we enjoyed chatting with them. The hotel is just across from the 2000 year old Pantheon. Our hotel window looked right at it and also overlooked a nice little piazza with a fountain. Restaurants pretty much surrounded the piazza which seemed pretty typical for Roman piazzas. We took a nap for a couple of hours and then explored the Pantheon and the area around our hotel. The Pantheon was built by the Romans as a temple to all their gods but was converted to a Catholic church; indeed there is a small worship area and altar on the side opposite the entrance. The tombs of a King of Italy and of Rafael are also in the Pantheon. A distinctive feature is the oculus, i.e., circular hole in the domed roof that lets in light. We later went over to the Trevi fountain, walked through a few stores and admired the Christmas lights along the Via del Corso. They were strings of red, green and white lights hung over the street and running lengthwise.

For dinner meals, we ate at restaurants close to the hotel on three nights. We generally had pizza Margarita, spaghetti bolanese, or ravioli. One restaurant was particularly memorable since we sat at tables in the narrow street outside the restaurant and enjoyed watching all the people go by. Plus our waiter was very friendly. It was funny to us that pizza Margarita is supposed to have basil so that the three colors of the Italian flag – red, white, and green - are represented. But there was never any basil. We specifically asked for basil one night and so they put three small leaves on top. It was also funny that we happened to talk with one Italian while waiting in line for customs at Philadelphia. Since there were so many pizzerias we asked whether that was typical of Italy or just of the tourist areas. He said pizzerias are very common throughout Italy but that he preferred Pizza Hut. Two other nights for dinner we just bought sandwiches and ate them in our room and the other night we bought bread, lunch meat, lettuce, sliced cheese, and yogurt at a small grocery store nearby. It was an interesting experience to feel like a Roman shopping for food. Breakfast was always a buffet of scrambled eggs, cheese and ham slices, chocolate croissants, and orange juice, coffee or hot chocolate at a restaurant across from the hotel that the hotel had contracted with. We usually didn’t eat a lunch per se, but rather had a gelato after walking in the morning. We really liked the gelato and the variety of flavors was tremendous although I usually went for either the tiramisu or stracciatora (vanilla with chocolate chips). It was about $3.25 for a small cup. There was even a gelateria that offered 100 flavors. We also usually had a pastry at one of the many numerous bakeries. And twice we had roasted chestnuts. We had never had roasted chestnuts; they were so good although a bit pricey at $6.50 for 10 large chestnuts served in a brown paper cone. There were lots of vendors standing over their large, shallow, circular pans with charcoal bricks. Interestingly, none of the vendors looked Italian but rather looked like either Indian or North African with darker skin. In some places we had to run a gauntlet of such vendors selling various toys or, when it rained, umbrellas. There were also numerous beggars sitting up against building walls asking for money.

English was not much of a problem where we were. There was almost always someone who spoke some English in the stores and shops we went to. We also felt pretty safe everywhere we went. There were always lots of people almost everywhere and lots of activity well after midnight. The piazza outside our hotel had street musicians that would play or sing until about midnight. One night there was a very good opera singer. (Fortunately our room windows were very sound proof.) The streets are typically very narrow and full of people and there are many tourists and lots of little shops and history. We enjoyed just walking around and window shopping.

The upper and lower houses of the Italian parliament were just a couple minutes walking from our hotel – the senate to the west and the lower house to the east. The buildings are right in the midst of all the other buildings with no buffer zones. You can walk right by them and not know what they are and cars can drive pretty close to them. There are some pop up posts in places to prevent traffic getting too close and there are some police, but in general, the security looked minimal. Since we were in Rome during the euro crisis and the Italian government was proposing further budget austerity, we did see small demonstrations against austerity measures the last three nights. They demonstrated in the piazza outside our hotel in front of the Pantheon or in front of the lower house. The ones in front of our hotel started with classical music or American pop music. We talked to two of our hotel desk clerks, a young worker in one of the bakeries, one of our tour guides, and an older professional that we met in line in Philadelphia. No one was happy about the economic situation. The young man didn’t believe he would get a pension (equivalent of our social security) when he got older. Another felt like it was a manufactured crisis and if the Italian government would sell some of its gold reserves or other assets, then there wouldn’t be a problem but he also said that the retirement age needed to be raised to something similar to the U.S. – “no more of this retiring at age 50. Italians are getting a dose of reality.” Two people felt that joining the euro zone was a mistake. And two people felt that people just needed to stop complaining and get a job. Of course two people pointed out that the financial crisis started with mortgage problems in the U.S. but didn’t actually blame the U.S. for Europe’s problems. Since they didn’t actually blame the U.S. for their problems, we didn’t pursue it. They were probably just trying to say that the U.S. is having its problems too.

On Saturday we walked up to the Spanish Steps to see what they were. (See photos.) They are very wide steps that go up about a 100 foot hill. There was lots of activity there since they are famous and there is a piazza and fountain. They we walked up to Piazza del Popolo to see where our tour started on Sunday. Then we crossed the Tiber River and walked down Cola di Rienzo which is a wide boulevard with lots of shopping. We ended up at St. Peters Square at the Vatican. We wanted to go into St. Peters Basilica but the line stretched 2/3 of the way around the Square so we went to the Vatican Museum. The museum contains many art objects, tapestries, and of course the Sistine Chapel. It was very crowded and goes through so many rooms that we really didn’t get as much out of it as we should have. It was awesome to stand in the Sistine Chapel and look at Michelangelo’s work on the ceiling. It was humorous though that the famous painting of the finger of God stretching out to meet the finger of Adam is much smaller than we thought it would be since it’s just a small part of the overall ceiling but pictures in magazines and on TV focus on it and give an impression that it’s very large. We headed back to the hotel. That night we went over to the Christmas fair in the Piazza Navona which was a circus in Roman times. All the lights and all the people were neat. There were two long rows of boots selling Christmas ornaments, toys, food and other trinkets. Not much high end stuff and again most of the vendors didn’t look native Italian.

Sunday was our big day since that’s when we went on the Angels and Demons tour. That is described at the end of this narrative. There were six Americans, five Germans, and four Italians on the tour. Monday we went back to the Vatican to go through St. Peters Basilica. We went on a tour and our guide was very good. We did see the sculpture La Pieta by Michelangelo which is a stature of Jesus’ body in the arms of Mary. There is a Plexiglas wall in front of it since several years ago a crazy guy took a hammer to it and did some damage before he could be stopped. You can’t see the repairs from far away. They never could find part of Mary’s nose. Regrettably, we could not go down in the crypt under the main level to see the tombs of the popes and St. Peter.

On Tuesday we went over to the Colosseum. The column of Trajan, Trajan’s market, and some ruins are on the way. Regrettably, it looked like Trajan’s market was closed to tourists for some renovations. It was neat to go into the Colosseum and try to imagine the 40,000 or so people in the stands watching the games. We rented an audio guide which was helpful but a guided tour would have been better. We also walked over to the Roman Forum. There isn’t much left of the Forum since much of the stonework was reused in other buildings. But it was still interesting to be at the heart of the Roman Empire of hundreds of years ago.

Wednesday we just walked around and shopped. We were hopping to find a purse or something for Janis but they were so expensive. We did go to a yarn shop and Janis bought a skein of yarn. There aren’t any large department stores in central Rome just many, many small shops. Throughout the trip we saw many beautiful Christmas lights, ornaments, and large trees. One tree was decorated with Mercedes Benz symbols and the nearby street had lights and decorated with Mercedes Benz symbols as ornaments. There are also so many churches and it seemed that the majority were called Santa Maria something.


Interesting facts from the Angels and Demons tour in Rome with Roberto Sunday, Dec. 11, 2012

Note: Our guide’s name was Roberto. He had an American father and Italian mother, but he grew up in Italy and his first language is Italian. He spoke English like a native with a very American accent. He had also just found out that his wife was pregnant with their second child and that there was some concern whether their parents would be happy about it because of the financial implications (or was it a story to bring a bigger tip?). Roberto got a B.S. degree in geology and a master’s degree in archeology. He had been doing the tour for eight years and keeps adding new tidbits of information. Interestingly, since the Euro crisis was ongoing, Roberto also said that the Italians were initially enthusiastic about joining the euro but that the prices of things went up a lot when the euro was introduced but that wages did not go up and hence many think it was a mistake to join. Below is what he told us on the tour.

o “Angels and Demons” is just a book and Dan Brown took considerable license to pick and choose and invent things to make a “page turner” of an adventure. One purpose of the tour was to reveal the “truth.”
o A basilica (coming from root word for bishop) is the seat of a bishop whereas a cathedral (coming from root word for cardinal) is the seat of a cardinal
o Capella or chapel in English means a small church but in Latin it means a tomb. The chapels in churches in Italy are generally family tombs and of course were built by wealthy families. Each one has a crypt below and is covered with a slab that is part of the floor and looks like a circular or elliptical manhole. The bodies are put in the crypt and just decompose. Hence, there can be quite an odor of decaying flesh which gave rise to the term “Demons hole” which was part of Dan Brown’s book. In particular, the church Santa Maria del Popolo was the first church in Brown’s book where an executed cardinal was found and was the church where we started our tour. It was built by the Chigi family whose wealth came from banking. Their family crest is six vertical shields in a pyramidal stack with an eight pointed star on top. In their chapel in the church are two pyramids on each side which symbolize the family crest. Dan Brown took poetic license to say that the pyramids stood for something else. The Chigi family was also responsible for funding much of St. Peter’s Square and you can see the family crest in several places. Also interesting is that the church was supposedly built on this site because there was an old forest of poplar trees with a legend that Nero’s ghost roamed the forest. The word for poplar is also “popolo” so the church means either Saint Mary’s of the People or Saint Mary’s of the poplars depending on your taste since no one knows for sure. The construction of the church there over 1000 years after the death of Nero, who is loathed by Christians, was a way to purify the site.
o Nero was loathed by Christians because he executed St. Peter on the site of a hill and possibly an ancient Etruscan village called “Vaticum” whence the name Vatican. Nero cleared the Etruscan ruins and built the Circus Nero there. Nero hated the Christians whose religion had been outlawed. After the fire that destroyed most of Rome, he blamed the Christians although it is often believed Nero started the fire himself. He also later executed Peter on this site and Peter is buried there. Legend is that, out of respect, Peter asked to be executed in a manner different than that of Jesus. So Nero had Peter, then around 70 years old, crucified upside down. Nero was very eccentric and used to bath in public with his three (??) wives and two (??) husbands, yes husbands, in a large shallow red stone bath filled with warm goat’s milk.
o The plan of St. Peter’s Square is in the shape of a keyhole which is a symbol of the lock and keys to enter the kingdom of heaven. Two crossed keys (our Basilica tour guide said one is silver to symbolize power on earth and the other gold to symbolize the power in heaven) are of course symbols of the papacy and has an origin in the symbolic Jesus giving Peter the metaphoric keys to the kingdom of heaven. There were of course no physical keys but rather just the metaphor. The Catholic Church’s “conclave” to choose the next pope comes from “con clave”, i.e., “with keys.” Peter is, of course, waiting with these keys at the gates of heaven.
o Peter was the first pope chosen centuries after his death by the Council of Nicea. The phrase “on this rock I will build my church” is also interesting. In Aramaic, a dialect of Hebrew, one of Peter’s name meant rock which was translated into Greek and then into Latin as the word meaning rock from which we get Peter, e.g., Spanish ‘piedra’ (rock), or petroleum, petrology, or petrograph, etc. (There is of course some dispute about this derivation of “Peter.”)
o It is also interesting that Rome is full of obelisks from Egypt from the Roman Empire days. Saint Peter’s Square has a large obelisk that is 4,000 years old. Regrettably, it used to have hieroglyphs but at one time the Church became concerned that the hieroglyphs might be witchcraft symbols and so had them “sanded” off. (Note also that this obelisk is also called the Pope’s p****.) But we must resist making judgments with today’s standards. The Catholic Church would certainly not do this today but would simply not display the obelisk there. “Angels and Demons” also refers to a plaque in the Square with a cherub blowing wind to the next church site. However there are actually 16 such plaques blowing wind from all directions symbolizing the central importance of Rome. Dan Brown chose the one blowing from the west because it suited his purposes.
o St. Peter’s basilica is actually the fifth basilica on the site. Bernini had a large role in the design including the 140 statues of saints and martyrs adorning the top of the colonnade. There are over 3,000 (??) statues designed by Bernini in Rome alone. Bernini of course didn’t sculpt them all but rather designed them and then supervised their construction by his workers and pupils.
o The tour also visited the church Santa Maria della Vittorio which was also a site in “Angels and Demons.” This church of course contains the beautiful statue by Bernini the “Ecstasy of St. Teresa.” This was apparently a scandalous work at the time since it put into stone the vision that St. Teresa wrote about in which she seemed to be saying that she had sexual intercourse with God although the statue is much more modest. St. Teresa was a nun from Spain whose family was Jewish at the time of Isabel and Ferdinand who gave Jews and Moors two simple choices – convert or leave. Her parents converted and wanted to marry her to a well off Christian family to help solidify their position. She did not want to marry the man plus she also wanted to be educated and so chose to become a nun. The statue is baroque as evidence by the emotion and movement. The statue is famous for the flowing robes and emotion in the face.
o The tour also included the Piazza Navona or Plaza of the Navy which was a Roman circus in which mock naval battles were sometimes staged. In “Angels and Demons” the protagonist, Robert Langdon, finds this obelisk with a dove with an olive branch in its beak, i.e., the angel of peace, which supposedly points to the next site. The olive branch doesn’t really point in the correct direction and the story invents the reason that the direction was changed which isn’t true. Also, the obelisk stands in the middle of a fountain and one of the kidnapped cardinals was chained and dumped into the fountain to drown. In actuality, the fountain is fairly shallow.
o The last stop was Castel Sant’Angelo. This was originally the mausoleum of Emperor Hadrian but was plundered in one of the barbarian invasions. “Barbaros” meant any foreigner to the Romans but came to be associated with the red beards, ‘barba ros,’ of the Teutonic invaders. The mausoleum was originally lined with marble as were many of the old Roman temples, etc. but the marble was stolen in the invasions. The marble was hung on the walls with iron pins and was simply pulled off by invaders and that’s why so many walls of Roman ruins have walls full of little holes. The crypt of Hadrian within the monument contained a golden urn of Hadrian’s ashes but the urn was taken and the ashes dumped. The Catholic Church built on top of this building as can be seen by two distinct architectural styles. The papal library is at the top and was where the kidnapped cardinals were kept and branded in “Angels and Demons.” Interestingly, Pope Paul IV was the pope who had all the ‘private parts’ of the Vatican statuary chiseled off and replaced with fig leaves. But the papal library which Pope Paul IV used frequently was decorated with a mural all around the top of naked figures. Hypocrisy?? It also interesting that the ‘private parts’ that were chiseled off were saved and that the Vatican does plan to restore them eventually. This paints a curious image of boxes of these body parts lying around somewhere in the Vatican. Notably, it is a very strong tradition for centuries that once a work of art is unveiled you don’t change it. But Pope Paul IV violated that rule. Michelangelo’s work in the Sistine Chapel also had many nude figures and the Pope waited until after Michelangelo died and then had some of the figures painted over with clothes. The Castel Sant’Angelo gets its name from Saint Michael, the patron and protecting saint of Rome. One part in “Angels and Demons” was a secret underground passage from Castel Sant’Angelo to the Vatican. There never was such an underground passage but there is certainly an aboveground passage that is atop a wall stretching between them.
o Our guide also reminded us of the pagan origins of the Easter Holiday although Easter is now associated with the Resurrection. I don’t remember everything our guide said but a quick web search (http://landscaping.about.com/cs/pests/a/easter_rabbit.htm) indicates that the name Easter comes from the pagan Saxon goddess Eastre who was the Teutonic god of the dawn, spring and fertility. (The sun indeed rises in the east at dawn.) The first full moon after the vernal equinox was associated with rebirth and pregnancy and of course the egg and the hare were symbols of rebirth and fertility.
o Our guide also touched on the existence of an ancient society called the Illuminati. There apparently no evidence for such a society but there was a Bavarian Illuminati secret society of freethinkers founded in the 1700’s. There is no evidence that Galileo, etc. belonged to such a society as portrayed in the book.
o Our guide also claimed that there were many similarities between the Christian belief in resurrection of Jesus and other older religions such as the Egyptian god Horus but that discussion seemed speculative and a little out of context and best left for those wishing to pursue it which can easily be done through Wikipedia and other sources.