Street scenes. More Contrasts.

Piazza del Popolo. Around this square only, there are three (yes, three) churches full-sized churches, not chapels. Then you have about a church every couple of blocks when you start walking along the streets that are born from the square.

Two of the main churches at Piazza del Popolo. I was chilling at the stairs of the one in the shade.

The other church at Piazza del Popolo, just behind the main gates.

I was sitting one day on the stairs of one of these churches, hiding from the sun, drinking my Diet Coke, people watching while resting as many other tourists. In that hour Piazza del Popolo was a colorful broad catwalk: from a Saudi man elegantly dressed in spotless white attire, with his three wives dressed in all black, to a chubby Italian who should have picked at least two more sizes for his baby-pink T-shirt and white jeans accompanied by a way younger woman in hot pants and sky-high heels.

Looking Up

Sheer sweetness and vibrant happiness.

Statues at Paseo de las Columnas, Vatican.

Would you tell this is... Vatican City? Red tiles, 'french' balconies, pine tree, tower, castle edge, and, the modern and so missplaced antennas!

Tribunali.

Cupulas at Piazza del Popolo (main churches).

More cupulas and towers at the entrance of Piazza del Popolo.

SSOme love on a historical building manage to steal a smile out of me. Ah, the rewards for lifting one's sight!
Building on Corso Vittorio Emanuele, across Area Sacra (note: "beso" is "kiss" in Spanish, though spelled with a single S).

City of Contrasts: History

B] History speaks for itself. The Coliseum was a place of cultural festivities and also of brutal human suffering, a stage for the best and the worst of the human being. Castel Sant’Angelo(*) was originally built to be a mausoleum for Roman Emperor Hadrian and its use went from decapitation site to Papal fortress, to Century XX museum.


As they say in Italy: there is not one stone in Rome without its history!

Castel Sant'Angelo from the other side of the River Tiber.

Castle and Ponte Sant'Angelo.

A true fortress.

(*) "The tomb of the Roman emperor Hadrian, also called Hadrian's mole, was erected on the right bank of the Tiber, between 135 AD and 139 AD. Originally the mausoleum was a decorated cylinder, with a garden top and golden quadriga. Hadrian's ashes were placed here a year after his death in Baiae in 138 AD, together with those of his wife Sabina, and his first adopted son, Lucius Aelius, who also died in 138 AD. Following this, the remains of succeeding emperors were also placed here, the last recorded deposition being Caracalla in 217 AD. The urns containing these ashes were probably placed in what is now known as the Treasury room deep within the building. Hadrian also built the Pons Aelius facing straight onto the mausoleum – it still provides a scenic approach from the center of Rome and the right bank of the Tiber, and is renowned for the Baroque additions of statuary of angels holding aloft elements of the Passion of Christ.

Much of the tomb contents and decoration has been lost since the building's conversion into a military fortress in 401 and inclusion by Flavius Augustus Honorius in the Aurelian Walls. The urns and ashes were scattered by Visigothic looters in Alaric's sack of Rome in 410, and the original decorative bronze and stone statuary was thrown down upon the attacking Goths when they besieged Rome in 537, as recounted by Procopius. An unusual survival, however, is the capstone of a funerary urn (most probably that of Hadrian), which made its way to Saint Peter's Basilica and was recycled in a massive Renaissance baptistery.

Legend holds that the Archangel Michael appeared atop the mausoleum, sheathing his sword as a sign of the end of the plague of 590, thus lending the castle its present name.

The popes converted the structure into a castle, from the 14th century; Pope Nicholas III connected the castle to St. Peter's Basilica by a covered fortified corridor called the Passetto di Borgo. The fortress was the refuge of Pope Clement VII from the siege of Charles V's Landsknecht during the Sack of Rome (1527), in which Benvenuto Cellini describes strolling the ramparts and shooting enemy soldiers.

Leo X built a chapel with a fine Madonna by Raffaello da Montelupo. In 1536 Montelupo also created a marble statue of Saint Michael holding his sword after the 590 plague (as described above) to surmount the Castel. Later Paul III built a rich apartment, to ensure that in any future siege the Pope had an appropriate place to stay.

Montelupo's statue was replaced by a bronze statue of the same subject, executed by the Flemish sculptor Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, in 1753. Verschaffelt's is still in place, though Montelupo's can be seen in an open court in the interior of the Castle.

The Papal state also used Sant'Angelo as a prison; Giordano Bruno, for example, was imprisoned there for six years. Executions were made in the small interior square. As a prison, it was also the setting for the third act of Giacomo Puccini's Tosca from whose ramparts the eponymous heroine of the opera leaps to her death.

Decommissioned in 1901, the castle is now a museum, the Museo Nazionale di Castel Sant'Angelo."

Source: www.wikipedia.com

Montelupo's Angel at the top.

City of Contrasts: Architecture

Rome is a city of contrasts. Not in the way that you may imagine in other countries, but it is; probably in its own way:

<>

Ruins in the city's heart: Area Sacra Largo di Torre Argentina.

A] Architecture is a clear example that speaks for itself. You have the overly pompous constructions (from buildings to bridges) against the overly simple, rustic and basic version. You have the colorful building in contrast with the grey or beige rock and plain red tile.

Grafittis on traditional historic buildings.

Colorful buildings in the Parliament area.

Black & White. Not really, Via del Corso is in the shade, while the sun is full on Vittorio Emanuele's carrara. Who can beat that?

Mercati Traianei, church and house.

Grey and Yellow. Oldest and less old (at Fori di Roma).

Imperial and Colonial: Arci di Tito and colorful tiled villas.

<>

Older and Newer. Grey and Bright. Coliseum and typical historical villa.

Ostentatious and Rustic. Vittorio Emanuele over Santa Maria e Francesca Ruins and bell tour.

The grey, the terracotta and the blue. The oldest, the older, and the everblue dome. Exit from Santa Prudenziana.

Peeping through Special Frames (last peep)

<>

Constantino's Arc through a Coliseum's Arc (entrance - and as far as I gould get!).

Peeping through Coliseum's gates.

Through the arches and gate of San Pietro in Vincole.

Santa Maria Navona's tower through gate's bars.

Vittorio Emanuele (top only) framed by buildings (view from Coliseum hill).

Natural "columns" framed by man-made columns: Palm trees between the Roman columns at Roman Forum ruins.

<>

Santa Maria Navona through gates.

<>

Santa Maria Navona and ruins, through Coliseum's gates.

Blue sky framed by Coliseum and greenery.

Peeping into the Coliseum. See the cross.

Sky through ruins around Santa Maria Navona/Sta Francesa La Romana.

Coliseum: peeping in.

Blue sky framed by a different Coliseum arc.

Italian Flag at Vittorio Emanuele monument, flanked by Italian pines, on a Carrara ground.

Peeping through Special Frames

Molto Particolare frames (very special frames):

Castel Sant'Angelo framed by leaves, from the other side of the River Tiber.

Vittorio Emanuele with a half-frame of greenery, from Villa Borghese.

Vatican (San Peter's dome) framed by foliage. View from Villa Borghese.

One fot the many churches's dome framed by two typical Italian pines.

Another church spire/tower framed by trees. 

Church tower from one of the Vatican's windows.

A look into Piazza San Pietro from the Vatican.

Rome and mountains from the way up to San Pietro's dome.

Porta Angelica (entrance to Vatican) framed by columns.

Porta Angelica framing outside the Vatican.