Day 9: Galleria & Villa Borghese

We started out our day with an English tour of Galleria Borghese.

Galleria Borghese is an art museum which is in the Borghese family's country estate from the late 1500's

The Borghese family collected art works from the late 1500's and early 1600's and housed their treasurers in the estate. In addition to the house, there are beautiful gardens and they used to keep exotic birds, animals, plants and flowers on the grounds as well. We saw many marble statues made by Bernini in his early twenties and paintings by Raphael done around the same time. The Bernini sculptures showed a new way of thinking about marble statues, these had facial expressions and the bodies showed movement and drew the viewer in. Before this time all marble statues were very stately, centered over the base with expressionless faces and the figures appeared to be standing still in a posed stance.

The Bernini statues showed action and emotion and were not centered on their base (like a statue of David with his weight shifted forward on one foot apparently ready to strike with his sling).

These were elements in marble sculpture that had never been seen before! Another sculpture shows a Borghese princess, Paulina, a contemporary women of the time, lounging on a couch naked, what a scandal! People were in a tizy about it.

The Borghese family really thought outside of the box. A painting they purchased for their collection that the Vatican rejected, showed Jesus stepping on a snake with a look of disgust or fear on his face and Mary's mother in the same painting looking old and weathered. People were used to seeing only depictions of beauty and grace from these figures, not every day looking depictions, so the Vatican refused the commission, but the Borghese's bought it and displayed it for all to see.
The Borghese villa was purchased by Rome in the 1800's and has been a public museum and the grounds a public park ever since.

After our museum tour we had lunch in the museum cafe. We had the requsite serving of espresso and some delicious Italian sandwiches.


We also picked up a few things in the gift shop and enjoyed browsing around.

After our lunch we headed out into Villa Borghese park. It was a clear sunny day, so a great day to be there. The kids played for a while



and then Mom and Mitch took off for a nice run through the park. A great place for a run on our last day in Rome! Aunt Beth, Aunt Molly, Ben, Jake and Charlotte headed back over to Trevi Fountain for a daytime view of it since we had seen it on a night walking tour the first time we went there.



We all met back at the apartment for some lunch and a bit of a rest after our morning adventures.

We are heading home tomorrow. We decided to start in packing and cleaning up the apartment because we are getting picked up for the airport at 7am-ugh! We will be in airports and on planes until 9:30pm,so we have a long day of traveling ahead of us.

We've had a wonderful trip to Rome. Seen so many sights and had so much fun, it is sad to leave our adventures behind but we will be glad to get home and see our families too!

Arrivederci Roma!

Day 8: Pompeii for a day

Today we headed out early for a day trip to Pompeii. Pompeii was an ancient coastal town near Naples that was buried in volcanic ash when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD.


It layed buried until the late 1880's when the government of the time was doing some digging and discovered artifacts. Excavation started taking place and the ancient city was discovered. Today the city is about 2/3 excavated and we were able to walk through the town and see what life was like 2000 years ago!

For our trip we hired Pietro and Marina, the landlords of the apartment we are renting in Rome, to drive us down to Pompeii and give us a tour. We started our day in Pompeii with some fresh squeezed lemonade and orange juice outside of the ruins. The Pompeii and Naples area are known for their citrus fruit, growing all around the city. The lemons are a huge variety we had never seen before. The fresh squeezed juice was delicious.


Then we went inside the ruins and learned all about Pompeii. One of the first things we noticed was that the ancient city is about 20 feet below the current day ground level. The whole thing was filled in with volcanic ash and was covered. Over the centuries new dirt, grass, plants, etc. grew on top of the buried area and no one realized there was an entire city beneath. When they uncovered it they had to dig down and down and down. At the bottom were fully intact ancient roads, complete with ruts from chariot wheels!



We saw all kinds of ancient businesses and homes.


They were very sophisticated for 2000 year ago, with wells and resevoirs to collect rainwater for daily chores, as well as indoor plumbing that ran fountains, drinking water and toilets.


Bakeries with ovens and grinding mills




Taverns with built in pots for beverages

Churches and government buildings

Public baths


Homes with fabulous frescos painted on the walls and mosaic flooring




and on and on.
There was even an ancient laundry and aquaduct pipes still visible!



The aquaduct also fed drinking water fountains on the main corners around the town

There were also row after row of pots, statues, weights and scales

and even casts of bodies that were buried in the ash!



We noticed the people were much smaller than today and it was kind of sad to see the casts of the bodies and be reminded how many people must have died when the volcano buried the city. Most of the people were overcome by toxic gases before they were buried in ash. Some evacuated when they saw signs the volcano would erupt, so some people were able to get out of the city in time.

Pompeii was a port town, a center of commerce for the entire region. So it was a bustling city with a population of about 20,000 permanent residents.


It was also a bit of a resort town, since it was on the seaside. Affluent families would come to vacation there. There were even amphitheatres for dancing, concerts and gladiatorial challenges.


After we finished touring the ruins we went to lunch at a local restaurant and had local specialties. We had fried seaweed balls and lots of seafood. We finished off the meal with a delicious type of espresso special to the region.

It was a three hour ride home, so we all rested along the way. When we got back to Rome, Pietro told us the oldest Gelato factory in Rome was on the way, so we all agreed we had to stop and try it!


We all got several flavors to try and it was a delicious way to finish off a wonderful day of exploring in Italy!

Buono Sera!

Day 7: Castel San'Angelo & Gladiator School

Today we headed over to Castel San'Angelo hoping to go inside and see the 3rd century tomb of Emperor Hadrian. It has also been used as a fortress, prison and papal residence over the years and is currently a museum.




Unfortunately, when we arrived there was some sort of labor union meeting going on that closed the facility to tourists today! Too bad, as we had to take the Metro and then quite a long walk from the station to the castle only to find out tourists were not being allowed to go through today. We did have an adventure seeing the famous bridge leading up to the castle, Porta San Angelo, built at the same time and once used for beheading criminals.

On the way back to the Metro we stopped at a great little Italian toy store and found some small items for the kids. Ben paid in Euros for his puzzle and we all had fun looking around.


Then we stopped at an Italian McDonald's just to see what it was like compared to at home and of course to use their clean restrooms, apparently the only one's in Rome-LOL! They had burgers and fries, but also salads with mozzarella balls and olive oil dressing, so very Italiano!



After lunch we headed on another adventure to the other end of the city, out the city wall to a Gladiator School on Appia Antica along the Appian Way. The school was situated off of the ancient coblestone road at the end of a dirt road and was really fun to participate in. When we arrived they gave us all gladiator togas and showed us training moves for agility


and both offensive and defensive sword fighting moves.

Once we had honed our skills we were put to the test in the arena to fight one another for points, first one to 5 won each round and if you stepped out of the "ring" it was an automatic loss. We took turns sparring with various opponents until we had our fill, some were more blood thirsty than others and even used distraction tactics to win matches (not mentioning any names, Aunt Beth!)




Next we tried our hand at knife throwing. We each got 5 tries and Ben won with 4 out of 5 knives sticking in the target.

Stiff Italian espresso was then served to all the adults to warm us up, it was awesome! Next we went inside and got to try on the Gladiator helmets

and were each given an SPQR tag (like military dog tags in the army) and a certificate announcing ourselves as graduates of Gladiator School.



We all passed with flying colors and had a blast learning about the gladiators today. On the way home we shopped in an Italian department store and stopped to pick up things to eat in for dinner tonight. We made homemade past primavera and of course stinky cheese, Italian bread and wine. Yum! To top off the day we watched Gladiator again in it's entirety and are now heading up to bed to get up early for more adventures tomorrow.

Buono sera!