this weekend...

Friday night was a fairly typical night, until we got lost…

We went from class to happy hour (aperitivo) with the Catholic Architecture Students. It was good to see some familiar faces and be part of the majority again (thanks to that large number of Loyola students…). We made plans to meet up today, which should be fun. We all split up to get dinner (and in our case, gelato :) ) and Martine and I headed off for some mozzarella, cherry tomato, and basil pizza – the best EVER! Shortly after eating pretty small slices of pizza, we thought it would be great to get some gelato. The problem is that we really like gelato from Blue Ice – the picture of gelato below is from there – and the closest Blue Ice was closed at this point. We decided that we were close enough to Piazza Spagna – where our Italian classes are held – to stop at the one by our school.

We didn’t look at the map before we left, because we pretty much knew where we were, until we accidentally stumbled across some of the most amazing things I’ve seen so far in Rome. We first realized we made a wrong turn when we saw Bernini’s Elephant in Piazza Minerva. It was pretty cool, we took a couple pictures, and read up on it. It was placed there in 1667 and has stayed there since then. On top of it, Bernini placed a 12th century Egyptian obelisk on its back. The obelisk – one of the 13 in Rome – was taken from a temple to Isis when the Romans took over North Africa during their quest for global domination.
So, here is a picture of it:



Also, a side note – the church behind it is the only gothic church in Rome.

Okay, so we seem to be on our way to Piazza Spagna now for real, then all of a sudden we come to this giant circular shape made of old brick. The old brick was the first sign that this was something important – according to Dr. Dawson, anytime you see old brick, you should immediately think: Ancient Rome! We took a couple pictures and exclaimed about how old it looked. We realized we were pretty lost, so we took out our map and realized we were at the back of the PANTHEON!

Now, I had never really learned about the Pantheon and I was DEFINITELY not expecting this. It is the hugest and most amazing thing I have ever seen in my whole life. I tried to take a picture of it, but it wouldn’t even fit in my camera lens. So its in pieces and I apologize, but here are some pictures of it, starting with the back when we didn’t realize what it was and then the front when we figured it out.

























So a little about the Pantheon: it was built from AD 119-128 (which, if you could see the size of this thing is a pretty short amount of time for such a huge building) by Hadrian and is the best preserved ancient building in all of Rome – take another look at the front of it, it looks brand new (sort of). The bronze doors in the picture above are the original doors, which means they’re almost 1900 years old. Two more cool things about it: because of its perfect architectural dimensions, you could fit a perfect sphere inside of it (the dome’s diameter is exactly equal to the height of the building). And: Raphael and Rome’s first king Vittorio Emanuele II are buried inside along with a TON of other people.

At this point, we were freaking out that we were WALKING home from dinner and passed these two incredible things. You know, totally typical. So, we keep walking and stumbled across ANOTHER amazing sight.

In Piazza Colonna is the Colonna di Marco Aurelio – the Column of Marcus Aurelius. This is a 100 foot column built around 190 to celebrate all of the battles won by Roman generals. The scenes spiral up the column and show Roman military life. Some pictures:







And to top it all off, I saw the most gorgeous Porsche by the Gelato shop and of course, have a picture for you guys:



So thanks for reading, and my dear readers, I’m sorry that your walks from pizza to gelato (oh yeah, I had a mix of strawberry and milk, yum) are not as interesting as mine.



Ciao!