April 16th, Rome

Another early start to another busy day. Notice a trend here? Who can be bothered with such a trivial thing as sleep when one is in Rome? So many churches to gape at, so many galleries to awe us, so much gelati to consume, so many miles to walk. So far, we’ve had beautiful weather, sunny and warm, with temps in the 70’s. There have been brief showers in the early evening, but nothing bad enough to interfere with our plans. Onward, we march! Although by now, we have begun to understand the wisdom of letting taxis transport us from one end of Rome to another. A respite for our aching, swollen, blistered feet.

We begin this wonderful day at what turns out to be one of my two favorite churches in Rome, Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola. The second one is the other Jesuit church, Gesu, also on the agenda for today. The church was built to honor the founder of the Company of Jesus, St. Ignatius of Loyola, a dissolute, contentious young man who, while nursing his war injuries, converted to Christianity and became a changed man.

The artist Andrea Pozzo designed the stunning trompe l’oeil effect ceiling. Joe and I gazed upward, marveling at the realistic appearing ceiling. The fresco shows St. Ignatius in Glory and his Apostolate in the World and has four monumental women, appropriately dressed to represent the four continents which were being converted by Jesuit missionary activity at that time.

Next up is the only Gothic church in Rome, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. We stop at the piazza to admire Bernini’s elephant obelisk. The church is very large and we don’t end up exploring very much of it, but content ourselves to sit inside the first chapel on the right, where a baby is being christened in a lengthy ceremony.

We then take a lengthy walk to Chiesa del Gesu, the first Jesuit church to be built in Rome. Il Gesu means The Church of the Holy Name of Jesus. The ceiling frescoes are amazing, painted mostly by Giovanni Battista Gaulli, known as "Il Baciccia," between 1672-1685. It is very similar to Sant’Ignazio, but even more beautiful. As we wander around taking photos, I see a table selling photos and books of the church. On display is a panoramic photo of the ceiling, but I don’t see any photos available. I stop two workmen whom I noticed earlier, and began to gesture and point. One of the men stands up, walks over to me, removes his work gloves and throws them down on the floor and says to me, in perfect English, “You can stop with all that pigdin you’re speaking. Just speak English.” I began laughing uproariously and saying, “Thanks for a good laugh. You just made my day.” This kindly man took me into the back, which was also beautifully decorated, and dug out a photo and carefully rolled and taped it for me.

One of my favorite sculptures in all of the churches and museums in Rome is the one in Gesu, called Religion Defeating Heresy by Pierre II Le Gros. Two figures representing Heresy fall, defeated by the powerful figure of Religion, while a putto is intent on ripping out erroneous pages from Heresy’s book. We exited the Gesu church reluctantly, leaving behind us a level of beauty and wonder not likely to be seen in another church.

Next we walked to the Pantheon, but we still didn’t go in just yet. We had been in Rome since the 14th and we were finally going to see the inside of this architectural wonder. After lunch, that is. We knew that any place too close to a major attraction like this one would not offer good food, but we were also not ready to walk too much farther, as we were both weary and hungry. When we did finally sit down, it felt real good. The food did its job of filling us up and we left recharged.

Onto the Pantheon we ventured. It was, naturally, very crowded, probably the most crowded place next to the Trevi fountain. We tried to appreciate the significance, like we did with the Colosseum, of standing inside this amazing building. We looked upward at the oculus, standing on the spot as suggested by our audioguide, and after a while got a sore neck. As Joe said later, “Wouldn’t it be nice if there were places to get on the floor so you could take a photo of everything above you?”

We then stopped for gelati, of course, and sat eating it just outside the Pantheon. After this, we called it a day and went back to our hotel.

After a nap, we got ready to go out again, this time to dinner at Da Francesco. This is where we met the two young men from Turkey, who were sitting at the table next to us. They were both originally from Turkey and befriended each other in Rome several years ago when they were both living here temporarily. The older one was married and still living in Turkey, and as luck would have it, was a lawyer like Joe. The younger man was living in Amsterdam, and they were celebrating a night out before the older man's wife arrived. We had a really enjoyable conversation with them, and it was one of the highlights of the trip for me.

Not ready to call it a night yet, we went to Piazza Navona and a dessert at Tre Scalini. At that point, we finally gave in and walked back to our hotel, enjoying nighttime Rome.