Roma part Due

Rome is my favorite city to explore. I loved hoofing it around this place. We took the metro as close as we could to the Borghesse garden/museum, but it still wasn't very close. We were able to explore the ancient wall, grab a pastry at a breakfast counter with a bunch of Italians, and list to a street accordion player all on the way to the museum. And at the museum....

I fell in love with art, especially Bernini, but I totally get art now. Not that I haven't always enjoyed art and enjoyed my time in Paris last year with all of that fantastic artsy-fartsy-ness, but I totally understood that art tells the story of the world this time. In Italy you're able to move from ancient-medieval-renaissance-up until today. I came home wanting to read about art history....haven't done it yet...but I will!

Another one of our delightful walks was across the Tiber in a neighborhood called Trastavere. We visited a great little church called St. Theresa's where a delightful old Italian man told us we needed to get married there and then go make babies. Our Italian was too limited to explain we have been married 12 years and have already procreated thank-you-very-much, but I loved the conversation all the same! At St. Theresa's there was a nun playing the organ and we discovered for 2 euro you can go down into the remains of her home. The church was built atop her house and the house is from 300 AD.

She had pretty nice digs, right? She was a wealthy roman who was martyred for holding Christian services in her home. They tried killing her by suffocating her with steam (seriously?) and she suffered with their attempts for 3 whole days. They eventually just cut off her head.

My favorite part of the entire trip happened on a day it rained. We were planning on going to the super large catacombs built outside the city along the Appian way. We only had one day left in the city and that was the day it decided to rain. The Appian way is a fair jaunt out of town and apparently they close the catacombs if they flood. We were nervous to go that far out and not be able to see them. We discovered an even older, smaller, more intimate catacomb within the city limits of Rome. We took a bus to a neighborhood where real Italians live, speaking Italian, and never really seeing tourists. The catacombs are under a church nearby. When we got to the church it was staffed entirely by Italian speaking nuns. There were a few other english speakers there, including one who had done her masters in art history in Florence, so we formed a group and voted her our translator.

 

This was such a special experience....being led through the dark catacombs by a little old Italian nun was surreal. But what really stood out to me was how peaceful this place is. Most of the bodies had been moved, but there will still several children and babies there behind their clay tombstones. The bodies buried here were from 80ad...so people who had heard Peter preach, the original converts if you will. I was struck by how much early Christianity and my faith (I'm Mormon) have in common. There was art on the walls in the catacombs had some things I've only ever seen in the temple. It was amazing to see the connection!

 

We left the next day for the Amalfi coast...next time I blog I'll do Amalfi/Berlin!