Bernini designed this elephant-with-obelisk sculpture, though it was actually executed by his pupil Ferrata. The Egyptian obelisk was found in the adjacent Dominican church, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva’s, garden. The obelisk is one of two moved from Sais, where it was built in 500 B.C. It was brought to Rome by the emperor Diocletian. Lucky […]
Santa Maria Sopra Minerva
This 13th century structure is the only Gothic church in Rome that was spared a total Baroque makeover. I say “total”, because the façade and part of its nave did not quite escape the 16th century Baroque chisel. The big draw is Michelangelo’s sculpture, Cristo della Minerva, or Christ Bearing the Cross. The church was […]
The Pantheon
Romans love their domes, and this is the mother of them all. This was the largest dome in the world until the 15th century. Don’t feel too bad, though, since it’s still the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. The Pantheon originated in 27 B.C., when a temple was ordered by Marcus Agrippa. In […]
Madonnelle
You can’t walk five blocks in Rome without seeing a madonnelle, or small madonna, staring out at you. Really. There are over 700 of them on street corners in the historic center. The original concept dates back to pagan times when votive wall shrines were set up to honor the Lares, spirits believed to protect […]
Piazza Navona
If you were standing here in the first century A.D., you were likely a revered Roman athlete competing in a footrace before a crowd of 30,000 in the Stadio di Domiziano. Then, this area was an outlying district known as Campus Martius, or Field of Mars, that housed arenas and barracks. It did not become […]
Vatican City Pilgrimage
One of the most powerful sights in Vatican City was the priests and nuns among the hordes of tourists taking photos, gawking at sculptures and gazing up at frescoes.
L’orso
Picture this: Rome. A maze of narrow cobblestone streets opens into a square. Eight a.m. Eighty degrees and humid. A powerful klieg light illuminates not only the entire scene, but the entire length of the tight street behind it. A man. A bear. A bear? Yes, a poor, poor man in a full bear costume… […]
Roman Signs
These modified Do Not Enter signs have quickly become my favorites. I love that every country has slightly different versions. Some other amusing signs seen around Rome.
Blind Windows
Until recently, I assumed all bricked-up windows were once real, functioning windows that got, well, bricked up. While that’s sometimes true, a good portion of the bricked-up windows we see around town were never real. They were designed as blind windows and their purpose was to maintain symmetry in a building’s facade. They’re deceptive since […]
