Rome continued......

April 11th and 12th

Tuesday we started our morning at the Borghese Galleria. It was formally Cardinal Borghese's home and was and continues to be a show-case of beautiful art. There are three pieces there by Bernini that are magnificent--truly, truly magnificent. They are the Apollo and Daphne sculpture, the Pluto and Persephone sculpture, and Bernini's David. I could not fathom *how* Bernini was able to carve the marble so thin and yet still strong enough to stand out perpendicular to the floor without breaking. The Apallo and Daphne sculpture is my favorite. It is phenomenal! Look it up since I cannot send you a picture of it. One of the things that they found out when the restored it a couple of years ago is that the leaves ring like crystal if you strike them. Why anyone would strike them, I do not know but it is still interesting.

We walked around the outside of an old Roman bath that would hold up to 3,000 bathers at one time. Wow! Last was the National Museum of Rome. It was full of old Greek statues and Roman copies of these statues. The best part though was the upstairs where they had whole rooms done up with old frescoes to give you an idea of what a room would feel like. They were amazing. One was a garden scene and you could just feel yourself relaxing in the peaceful atmosphere of the "garden". This really helped me understand what their homes must have been like. I want frescoes in my house!!!!!!

The afternoon was mostly free time. We went grocery shopping, had a big lunch and made it to an internet cafe. I cannot believe how hard it has been to get internet here. I got to finally talk to Mark and that was the highlight of my day!

Wednesday- Appian Way and St. Peter of the Chains.

Today we took a wonderful tour of the Appian way. This is the area of Rome where people were buried, both Christians and Romans. It was against the law even for emperors to be buried in the city walls, so tombs and mausoleums were built along Appian Way. We started by seeing some of the larger mausoleums and taking a tour of a catacomb. Romans preferred cremation while Christians wanted to be buried. Apparently it was a myth that they buried the Christians in secret as there were Roman seals in different parts of the catacombs and the Christian catacombs were connected to the Roman's cemetery.

It was quite interesting. The ground here is made of a type of volcanic rock called tuff that is very soft and easy to dig into, but that hardens to stone when it is exposed to air. The Christian graves were stacked on top of each other like very, very, shallow bunk beds and over 100,000 graves were in this catacomb alone. They estimated that there were over 27 of these sites at one time but only a few still remain.

They are built layer under layer and at least 3 levels deep. After they wrapped the body in linen, (like Christ) they put it into the side of the wall and then covered it with marble or stone, usually with their name and the name of the emperor at that time.

At the other end of the upper level, was the Roman cemetery. It was interesting because they had quite elaborate rooms with a gate closing off the tomb. Inside were several levels that all held the urns of different family members. You could fit hundreds of family members in these different rooms and then just keep digging down if you needed to.

It was quite the contrast to the Christian ones. They were small, cramped places (not even sure how they got the bodies in such tight spaces) to hold a full body whereas the Romans had spacious rooms to hold their urns. I guess bodies just take up a lot more space! Anyway, Anne and I like the idea of a family crypt. ;~)