Rainy Monday in Rome

Monday was a quiet day.  It started raining Sunday night, and Monday morning it was really pouring.  I spent a lot of the day at the academy library.  In the afternoon I returned to my apartment for lunch and skyped Gary.  By mid-afternoon the rain had let up, and the sky looked like a watercolor painting: blues and greys running together, with little bits of sun peeking through here and there.  I decided to go to the Vatican and visit St. Peter’s Basilica.  You really can’t visit Rome without going to St. Peter’s!

I’ve written in the past about the immensity and opulence of St. Peter’s, the biggest church in the world.   Since everything is ginormous, there is a sense of proportion that keeps you from realizing just how big everything is until you’re standing next to it.  The holy water fonts are in the form of fat little baby angels (yes, art historians; I know they’re called putti) holding a bowl of water.  Once you approach, though, you realize that the fat little baby is as big as I am!  The length of the nave on the inside is longer than two football fields.  The subdued sky was a vivid contrast to the white, tan and gold of the basilica’s exterior, and the interior illumination made the colored marble and gilt bronze inside the basilica seem to glow.  Either because it had been raining or because it was Monday, there weren’t many people in the huge church.  A priest was saying mass at one of the dozens of side altars (only the Pope can use the high altar), but otherwise the church was quiet.  I spent some time walking around and looking at the art; a lot of it is by Bernini, one of my favorite sculptors and architects.

After returning to Trastevere, I spent a quiet evening at home.  I ate a salad and some fresh bread from the wood-oven bakery, wrote up some notes, and went to bed.

I put up a few pics from Sunday.  Check out the giant steak at http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielcmack/sets/72157625009418769/.