Rome blew our minds! In the three days that we were there we managed to see all the major tourist sites. On our first day we visited the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel and took a guided tour. We are glad we did or else we wouldn't have known anything about the sculptures and paintings the museum proudly held. At the Louvre in Paris we had seen a mummified body, inside the Vatican Museum we saw a Mummy unravelled. Check out the photo!
The Sistine Chapel was incredible. You had to be dead quiet and you weren't allowed to take pictures or videos. The roof consists entirely of elaborate, religious painted scenes. Michelangelo painted the roof of the Chapel, but he considered himself as more of a sculptor than a painter and told the church to let Raphael do it. In the end he was convinced to paint it even though he was in his sixties and had to design a scaffold system which turned out to be similar to the one constructed to refurbish the ceiling 20 years ago. (Funded by the Japanese would you believe?) He had to lie on his back to paint the roof and had a lot of the oil paint fall into his eyes. It is believed to have made him almost blind.
St Peters Church was massive and the history and the vastly different designs of the pope’s tombs made it very interesting. When St Peter was going to be crucified by the Romans he said, “I am not worthy of the same death as Jesus, I want you to crucify me upside down.” His body is buried at the base of the church. The walls, floor and pillars supporting the Church are all made out of marble and the roof is made out of a series of paintings with the frames made out of gold. There was also a dead Pope on display, which was pretty gruesome. Popes are buried in airtight marble caskets. Apparently the one we saw had his casket opened for ‘beautification’ and because the body was in such good condition they decided to put it on display. The body has been coated in a fine layer of wax to help preserve it and lies in a glass case inside St. Peters. At first we didn't think it was a real person until an Italian church official told us it was.
We visited the Colluseum twice in the three days we spent in Rome. Once at night which looked awesome with the lights on it. We also visited it at sunset which brought out the colours of the bricks that formed it even more. We sat there looking at it trying to imagine what it must have been like when it was being used as a massive stadium. We tried to imagine the games and gruesome entertainment that took place there back when it was whole, while the whole time being harassed by people trying to sell us scarves, camera tripods and models of the Colluseum.
We were trying to find The Spanish Steps that Mum so badly wanted to see, took the wrong turn and found ourselves at the Forum, the centre of Ancient Rome’s government. The Italian Army had set up a display in the car park opposite so the boys got to climb into tanks, troop carriers, a helicopter and simulators. Alex proved to be a monkey reaching the top of a climbing wall twice while Jord and Ben had fun trying. We spent some time there and headed off to find The Spanish steps. We finally managed to track them down after getting pictures with three Lamborghinis a hotel had on display. Mum was happy to have finally found them and we went into a church at the top of the steps. It was almost as good as St Peters, but not as big with the same sort of design used, however the total silence of those praying set the mood. We went into a five star hotel to use the toilet and were asked for our room number Jordan quickly made one up and we had used the toilets and were out of there in no time.
The Trevi Fountain is definitely the best fountain in the world. We had dinner at a Pizza joint while admiring the magnificent fountain through the window. The fountain was made out of marble and the Romans and horses that had been carved out of it were so realistic you could mistake them for the real thing!
Rome was awesome despite the fact that we got back to our hotel past midnight each night and my legs ached for the next two days from all the walking.
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