Museums of Rome (Jan 23)

Today we visited 3 museums in Rome, including what turned out to be our favorite of the whole trip! That's a lot of art to take in all in one day!

Our first stop was the National Museum of Rome, and our goal was to see the highlights and be out in one hour! We were looking at the sarcophagus (coffin) of an 8 year old girl mummy and ONE of us leaned in to get a closer look! All of a sudden there were alarms and security (but not as big of a deal as what you are picturing right now)! Turns out there is a piece of red tape on the floor that ONE of us crossed! The security was very relaxed, like this sort of thing happens all the time!! If I were guarding an ancient mummy, I'd do more than put red tape on the ground!

One of our favorite pieces here was called "The Boxer". It is an original 2,000 year old bronze statue of a man with his hands wrapped (like a boxer) sitting on a stone looking over his shoulder. The artist used slightly different metals to give lips, wounds, even nipples a slightly red color. There was incredible detail, and again, you could walk right up to it without rope or glass in your way.

Next was our favorite museum of the trip: The Borghese Gallary. It used to be the home of Cardinal Borghese, and art collector. They only allow 360 visitors 4 times a day, so you need to plan and get tickets ahead, but it is very worth it! Also, excellent audioguides-worth the 5 euros! We saw a scandalous nude statue of Napolean's sister Princess Pauline, Bernini's David (which we liked even more than the more famous Michaelangelo's David later in the trip), and Carvaggio's David (a painting of David holding Goliath's head in which Goliath was a self portrait. This was his confession of murder when he asked the Pope for pardon). Anything by Bernini is AMAZING!



After lunch we went to Palatine Hill where all the Roman Emperors built their palaces. It was amazing to walk among the ruins and try to imagine what life was once like! We was the Circus Maximus which was used for chariot races and could once seat 300,000!!! The largest stadium today seats a mere 120,000! On our way home, we got dinner from Osvaldo, our favorite Roman pizza man. He and Andrew are starting to bond...in English and Italian.