Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, 1

Four Roman basilicas date from Constantine, whose 313 Edict of Milan legalized Christianity in the Empire. They are the four "papal" churches of present-day Rome: St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, St. Peter's (destroyed in the 16th century to make way for the current St. Peters), and St. Paul's Outside the Walls. We had seen the first three on previous visits to Rome, but never had been to St. Paul's, and we were determined on this visit to complete the set.

I don't know how many churches we have visited in the last five years. Several hundred, I suppose, including some of the very greatest. So it's encouraging, to us at least, to know that we can still be absolutely knocked out and overwhelmed by yet another of these great buildings. St. Paul's was the largest of the original four, built on the traditional site of Paul's tomb. (Paul, the apostle to us gentiles, was beheaded in 67AD, story goes, outside the Aurelian walls of Rome; he was considered a Roman citizen and thus not to undergo the indignity of crucifixion). Constantine's original basilica was taken down later in the 4th century to make way for the present building, still 4th century, and still second largest of all Rome's churches. St. Paul's burned in 1823, mostly the nave, but enough survived, and the subsequent re-building adhered quite faithfully to the original 4th century plan...together with the numerous ornaments added over the centuries. Nothing we had read prepared us for the immensity and majesty of this church, not to mention its great antiquity, and we spent a couple hours marveling. If you go to Rome, don't miss it.

What the interior looked like prior to the fire (from the museum)

After the fire

So, disoriented a bit, we walked in the north transept, thinking
it was the main entrance, and were already wowed looking at
the golden coffered ceiling, the portraits of the popes, the
giant alabaster windows, and

In the half dome, the largest Pantokrator mosaic I have seen yet--maybe 100
feet across--

And a humble little Pope Honorius III, responsible for this incredible 12th
century mosaic

Then we are in the altar area looking into the tomb of St. Paul

And then we turn around and look abaft and see the colossal nave, 80 granite
columns, a "forest of columns" as many writers have put it, two giant aisles on
either side, ever more golden coffered ceiling, portraits and paintings, Corinthian
capitals everywhere, more alabaster than in all the previous Italian churches
we've seen...

Thus

And thus

And thus; the alabaster was a gift from the King of Egypt...

The Easter Candle, a huge carved column,12th century

The south transept, with a great Raphael

The inner south aisle

National Roman Museum, 2013

We visited the National Roman Museum in Rome in 2011 (http://roadeveron.blogspot.it/2011/05/museo-nazionale-romano.html), and were impressed. Not least because we ran into Rickie Stevie there. This is one of the great museums of classical culture and history--the others being in Naples, Athens, and Instanbul--and we had to see it again.

And take many of the same pictures again: the Pugilist, one
of the few bronzes to have come down to us

And the discus-thrower

And Dionysus

And great sarcophogi

But our favorite is still the Villa of Livia, a large room, four walls of which are the
frescoed garden of Livia, 2,000 years old

Incredible stuff, nearly an encyclopedia of plants and birds

And we always seem to run into someone important at this museum...here, Amanda
Daniels, a graduate of Missoula's Sentinel High school, where Vicki taught, and who
helped us get on a plane several years ago...

Inlaid glass...not quite in windows yet

Detail from one of the scores of huge beautiful mosaics

In one of the frescoed villa rooms

And another...

With interior design notes

Another not-to-miss place in Rome

Galleria Pamphilj Doria

At length, minus a hat, and with the assistance of a high school Latin and Greek teacher with whom Vicki had a pleasant, helpful, and informative conversation, we arrived at the Galleria Pamphilj Doria. The GPD is somewhat like a Great House in the UK of GB: many impressive and beautifully-appointed state rooms. Only it's in Rome and on the outside looks like another huge cruddy old building with faded plaster falling off. On the inside, however, it's a palace. That's the Italian way. Anyhow, the Pamphilj-Doria family got its big break when its patriarch became Pope Innocent X. All along they had been collecting art, and the palazzo here contains some 700 works, about 300, I think, on display. For comparison, the National Gallery in London contains somewhat over 2,000 works. So this is a major private collection, very probably the largest private collection we have seen. To be sure, much of it exemplifies the perils of private collecting, particularly in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries: much is by artists who didn't quite pan out as hoped, many works by the biggies turned out actually to be "in the manner of" or "by a follower of" or "by the studio of" the biggie. Nevertheless, there are some major masterpieces here. The lot of it is presented in 17th century gallery style, that is, paintings stacked from wainscot to ceiling, in a bit of a jumble, historically, but historically correct for the period. It's an art-lovers paradise.

Courtyard

Actually, we liked the ground floor bath best of all

After the several state rooms and one of the better audio-
guides we have heard (done by the current Prince himself),
you get to the several corridors of art...

The ceilings of all of which are done is this interesting faux-
Roman style

A beautiful little Durer...apparently under-appreciated here

A Filippo Lippi Annunciation

Raphael's Double Portrait

An early Caravaggio--Rest on the Flight to Egypt--not the
"painter of light" yet, but you can still tell it's a Caravaggio
since the composition is organized around someone's
buttocks

Peter Breughel Elder's Naples, smallish, but a real treasure

And the greatest of the gems, Velasquez' Portrait
of Innocent X--Innocent is said to have rejected
the portrait as "too real"

And, in the same room of treasure, Bernini's
bust of Innocent X

Impressive place; glad we finally saw it

Lost In Rome

Well, we were never lost, exactly; we always
knew sort of where we were, and we had been
to all these places before, and had maps, and
knew how to get from one palace to another...it's
just that our navigatrix got confused about
which Palazzo Pamphilj we wanted (the Palazzo
Pamphilj Doria); but eventually we got there
and saw the great museum; and also had a nice
visit at the Brazilian Embassy and many other
places between the Piazza Navona and San
Luigi dei Francesci; after three administrative
days off--weather, work, desire to avoid the
3-day weekend city crowds--we were sort of
out of practice; oh, Vicki did lose her Quechua
hat somewhere on these journeys; lost in
Rome

After hopping off bus #64 and walking a few
blocks, we found ourselves not at the Piazza
Navona, but standing in the piazza between
the Pantheon and Santa Maria sopra Minerva,
both, however, on our current list of sights to
see; again

SM sopra Minerva has its share of treasures...
a later Michaelangelo

Tomb of Fra Angelica

A chapel frescoed by Felippo Lippi; St. Thomas Aquinas in
there somewhere, probably with a book

Ditto

SM sopra Minerva is Rome's only Gothic church; note
pointy arches and four-part vaulting; don't bother looking for
flying buttresses, height, light, etc; though many are quite
wonderful, I am coming to the conclusion that Italian Gothics
should get an asterisk; probably English Gothics too

It's nonetheless one of Rome's most tourist-friendly churches,
with this big helpful map showing the locations of all the
masterpieces

I can never walk past this my favorite building...

Through the oculus

Early Monday morning crowd

Moving right along, we are now in the church of Luigi dei
Francesci, which features 3 mature Caravaggios in its
St. Matthew chapel, all concerning, you guessed it, St.
Matthew; here, his martyrdom of Matthew

And here, his greatest hit, IMHO, The Calling of Matthew;
I recently discovered IfArtCouldTalk.org, which provides
clever captions for various masterpieces...this one is...
"Where's the owner of the double-parked red Pinto?!"

More seriously, here is the tomb of the great
landscape artist, Claude Lorrain, Turner's hero

Less seriously, here we are in the Piazza of
St. Eustace, gazing up at the Basilico of Santo
Eustachio--patron saint of deer hunters--whose
legend and depictions never fail to crack me up

And here we are now, blocks away in the
wrong direction, at the Piazza Navona and
Bernini's Fountain of Rivers

Piazza Navona, Domitian's circus; the Brazilian Embassy is
over on the left there, in the Palazzo Pamphilj