Churches and Catacombs -- June 14-16

Sorry I haven't been completely disciplined about keeping up the blog. I think the lack of good sleep is starting to wear on me and coming in to the Internet Cafe at 11.00 at night just seems like such a chore! I would rather sit in bed and write postcards, which I have been doing a lot of, so watch those mailboxes.

My brain is so tired right now, and so much has been going on, that it is difficult for me to think back to Tuesday to remember everything that went on, but I'll give it a shot...

Actually, I just had to ask Taco (he's in here doing email as well) and it took both of us a few minutes to come up with the answer...that should tell you something about our state of mind.

anyway, on Tuesday we visited the Palatine hill, which is the hill overlooking the Roman Forum which became the place for the Imperial palaces starting with Augustus. As some of you may know he kept his house fairly simple by patrician standards, preferring to put out the message that he was not a dictatorial emperor, merely a leader among normal men (yeah, right). anyway, his house and that of his wife Livia were joined into one large but modest dwelling -- we have examples of other rich houses of the period which are larger. The two houses are not open to the public, but we were able to visit them. When Christina and Dan and I visited with Baylor back in 1997 Alden was able to get us a quick tour, but this time I was able to go in and really take my time looking around. Also, much has changed since last time I was there...they have roofed the house of Livia, so walking in it is now like experiencing an actual Roman house...rather dark, but pretty impressive.

There are beautiful frescoes preserved on the walls, as well as some of the lead water pipe system, which of course was the root cause of the declining Roman population...lead in the water caused sterility in the women. the pipes are stamped with Livia and Augustus' names, which makes the identification of the houses fairly certain. Unfortunately, part of Augustus' house eroded off the side of the Palatine into the valley (sound familiar, Southern Californians?), but it was still an interesting visit.

Afterwards some of us milled around the Palatine Museum, which is not that great, then Taco and I took off to the Baths of Caracalla again, hoping that they would be open this time. We were not disappointed. These baths are not one of the major tourist sites in Rome, although I argue that they should be. They are incredibly massive (the biggest ever built) and fairly overwhelming. In the absence of crowds of tourists they have been taken over by many kinds of birds and it was downright creepy to walk through the massive abandoned ruins with birds calling to each other across it. I am sure they were upset that we were there, as many of them have nests in the ruins. Anyway, I highly recommend the site if you are ever in Rome.

The next day was an Art History day for us. We visited the Museo Montemartini Centrale. Again, I highly recommend this site. It houses excellent examples of Roman sculpture and mosaics, and it stored in the old electric powerhouse of Rome (from around the 1950s). The juxtaposition of the graceful sculpture against the massive iron machinery was pretty impressive. Not much to say that pictures can't say better, though.

Today was another museum day, although far less interesting in my opinion. We took the train out to the section of town called the EUR, which is the section built in the late 30s and early 40s when Germany was slated to host the world's fair in 1942. Obviously that did not happen, but the area remains the best example of integrated Fascist architecture. If you know anything about the architecture of the Fascists, you will understand how interestingly bland the whole neighborhood really is.

The museum we visited is the Museo Nazionale Civilta Romana. All of the art in the museum are plaster casts of Roman pieces. The exhibit was done by the Fascists as an attempt to educate the Roman people of their noble heritage, and to set Mussolini up as the new Augustus. I guess it is a good place to see a lot of works at one time that are separated in reality in museums in many different countries, but it just did not interest me all that much. The one thing that was interesting, though, is the scale model of Augustus' Rome which I have a photo of, nicely framed, hanging on my living room wall. I had no idea it was so massive. Again, pictures, including humans for scale, will have to tell that story.

After the museum Taco and I took a bus out the Via Appia to see some of the catacombs, which is something I have been wanting to do for years. We were only able to end up seeing one of the catacombs because of time -- St. Sebastian. This is supposedly the catacomb to which the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul were moved for safekeeping for awhile, before Constantine had them moved back to their original tombs after the end of the persecution of the Christians. Its hard to convey the experience of being in the catacombs...they apparently go on for miles and miles and this one in particular housed 60 - 70,000 burials, mostly Christian. I intend to go back and visit more of the catacombs another day, but our exploration of the Appian Way was rained out so we had to head back to town. The only other monument we were able to see was the tomb of Caecilia Metella, a huge mausoleum built for an apparently very important Roman woman in about 60 BC, then converted into one side of a Renaissance fortress at a later date. It is interested in a very crumbling way.

I guess I should cut this off for this evening and rejoin the group at the Villa (doesn't that sound fantastic -- way more fantastic than it really is), but I will try to write again very soon.

Hello to everyone back home. I miss you guys!