Home | Gallery | Travelogue | Write!
Album: By Country | By Date Italy | February 2001 < Prev: The Forum | Next: Pompeii: Part I >
Travelogue: By Country | By Date Italy | February 2001  

February 2001 - Walking About Rome

Imperial Forum, Vitorio Emmanuel Monument, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Campo De Firori, and Home Again

View from Vittorio Emmanuel. The flying saucer just to the right of the leftmost flagpole is the top of the Pantheon
Temple of Portunus, typically Roman with high base and steps up the front. Portunus was (or is!) the god of ports. Part of the Imperial Forum. Trajan built this one. Vittorio Emmanuel and the eternal flame honoring Italian soldiers
View from Vittorio Emmanuel Grandma is a bit odd At the side of the Pantheon Front of the Pantheon
The great dome of the Pantheon. The inside of the building is shaped like a perfect sphere was placed into a cylinder. The Pantheon dome was the largest dome until modern times. The dome on the Florence cathedral was the first in Europe to rival it, and it was not finished until the 1400s. Looking out the door of the Pantheon Inside of the Pantheon, converted in 608 to the Church of All Martyrs. The renaming of the Pantheon helped it survive most of the predations of the Christians. The Pantheon's only light comes from a hole in the top of the dome, called the oculus. The dome's builders carefully selected and graded the aggregate material used in the dome's concrete. It ranges from heavy basalt in the foundations of the building and the lower part of the walls to the lightest of pumice toward the center. In addition, the uppermost third of the cylinder of the walls, seen from the outside, coincides with the lower part of the dome, seen from the inside, and helps contain the thrust with internal brick arches. The cylinder has walls that are 20 feet thick.
Outside the Pantheon The front of the Pantheon and how it joins the cylinder that contains the dome Tourists in front of the Pantheon Bernini fountain to four rivers in Piazza Navonna. The figure in the background is the Nile. Its head is covered, because its headwaters were unknown.
There's a legend that Bernini hated the facade of the church of S. Agnese in the background. The facade was designed by a former student and rival of Bernini, Borromini. This explains that the statue of the Nile River hides its head to avoid seeing the Borromini facade, and that of the Río de la Plata raises its arm in alarm to prevent the building from falling. The fountain was, in fact, unveiled in 1651, a year before the church of S. Agnese was begun, two years before Borromini was called in.
The Ganges Some sea guys on one of the side fountains Walking down a narrow street
This is what happens when we let the children use the camera. A wonderful lady with a Smart car. We admired her car in a library parking lot. She drove around until she found us again and let us take pictures with the kids inside the car. Statue of Girodano Bruno in Campo d'Fiori. Bruno was a philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional Earth-centered astronomy. Bruno stuck to his ideas despite a seven-year trial before the Roman Inquisition. Pope Clement VIII declared Bruno a heretic and sentenced him to death. On February 17 1600, Bruno was brought to the Campo de' Fiori, his tongue in a gag, and burned alive. Piazza Argentina's ruins. Site of what is probably the oldest stone temple remaining in Rome - dedicated to Feronia, the goddess of woods and vegetable gardens. It's in this area that Caesar was assasinated beneath the statue of his rival Pompey.
More Colosseum. Sleepy tourists eating in Paddy's Pub.