Tuesday 22 April: The Capitoline Museums

After the good weather of the past few days, Rome awoke to a day of rain. Beth and I continued our exploration of ancient Rome by walking across the river at Tiber Island, where one of the foot bridges dates to the middle Republic, about 200 BCE. We viewed the Augustan-era monuments at the foot of the Capitoline Hill, including the Portico of Octavia, the Theater of Marcellus, and the Temple of Apollo. The overcast sky actually allowed me to get some good photos for my research. From there, we continued up to the Capitoline Hill and ascended the ramp past two enormous statues of Castor and Pollux, and reached the top of the hill.

Here in antiquity stood the great Temple of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus (Jupiter Best and Greatest), the king of gods and humanity and patron of the Roman state. Almost completely destroyed when the Empire fell, the area was neglected until the Renaissance, when the city government commissioned Michelangelo to design a new piazza and facades for palaces facing it. The Piazza del Campodoglio is beautiful, and two of the magnificent palaces now house the Musei Capitolini, the Capitoline Museums. The third is the seat of the municipal government of Rome. I love the Capitoline Museums. They tie with the Vatican Museums as the world’s best collection of Roman sculpture, and also have collections of art from the medieval, renaissance, and baroque periods. Plus, they are a much more manageable size than the Vatican.

Beth helped me single out Augustan-era works for my research, including the giant statue of Mars Ultor, the avenging Mars that Augustus credited with helping him punish the assassins of his adopted father Julius Caesar. Suffering from museum foot, we lunched at the rooftop caffè, with spectacular views of the city, even in the drizzle.

After the museums, we continued to explore the Centro Storico, the main section of downtown Rome. That evening we dined at a really good (and cheap) place where we had eaten previously, this time getting stuffed pasta, rigatoni with sausage and mushrooms, and yet more pizza capricciosa, with the egg fried and slightly runny so you could smear warm yolk all over (if you like your eggs loose you will appreciate this). Home, writing, picture organizing, and bed.