Downtown Ancient Rome

Even in June, Rome is very hot. I don't know if you can see here, but any restaurant which has fans outside adds two little water jets to the fans to cool everyone down:

I decided to make my way to the Pantheon first thing. It's one of the most famous landmarks, and I enjoyed Paris's interpretation of the Pantheon, and I have a server named after it so that sealed the deal... but I got sidetracked when I ran into a little museum on the way, dedicated to digital art and ink drawings:

Nice little place, and the second sketch made me go to that spot later to see if those sky-tunnels are actually there. (They aren't, at least right now. :( But there were multiple sketches of them so I think they existed at one point.)

I also ran into the Fontana di Trevi, whose water is a beautiful carribean-blue colour but is too busy to get close to

Sidetrack #3 was this church

which was pretty nice, with the light filtering through stained-glass windows.

Apparently it was built for university students. And, at the front door was a little old lady enforcing a dress code. No exposed shoulders, no short skirts, certainly no vests or backless dresses. I guess this is a Catholic church and they can ask for those things; but it seemed unusual and strange, especially at a church that purported to serve university students. And also incredibly sexist since 98% of the offenders were girls. And almost every girl coming in failed the dress code -- remember, it's 30-35 degrees Celsius outside. The door-guard had shawls and wraps which could be turned into makeshift dresses/etc, but there weren't enough of them to go around. So this is as far in as a lot of visitors got:

I can't imagine being turned away for dressing in an "ungodly" manner would make anyone feel good about themselves, even if they were atheist. :( Actually, all the Christian places I visited in Rome had the same dress code, although this church was the only one with sufficiently low visitor volume to actually enforce it. FYI, Catholic church, not everyone looks like this anymore...

Anyway. I went on, and found a really cool art store -- if you're counting, this is sidetrack #4 --

which made me want to buy pastels and pencils and art books, only I didn't of course, because luggage. Since Rome's center is so packed with old monuments, the modern shops have to fit in wherever they can, and there were a lot of useful places like this mixed with the tourist spots.

OK, the art store was two blocks from the Pantheon, so I finally made it:

it's a beautiful temple with an ancient Latin inscription -- it adorned an earlier version of this building which was destroyed by fire, and reused here --

although not everyone can see it.

Inside, it's the largest freestanding concrete dome ever (even two thousand years later)

with a small hole at the zenith so as not to cut off the heavens. It's super popular

and you can see the arches along the sides where different Roman statues once resided, all the gods of the Roman pantheon

Now, they contain different Christian statues or sometimes just paintings, because this building was taken over and declared a Catholic church at some point. It doesn't fit at all. The whole structure of the building, its circular shape, its radial division into arches, its symmetry, is designed to honour multiple deities equally. There is a spot for Jupiter, king of the gods, but it is a modest throne. This is not a monotheist church. It feels like you're inside a giant sundial as Apollo, the sun god, illuminates each of his peers in turn.

At first I was upset at this takeover. Then I realized that the building is probably only so well preserved because the disciples of its adopted religion took care of it. As they will. At least the dress code isn't being enforced here (despite signs).

Overall, a very impressive building and one I'm very glad I had the chance to see...

I stepped out into the Roman cobblestones

in search of those sky-tunnels I mentioned earlier. But first I stopped at this ancient racetrack

-- yes, the obelisk is Egyptian, there are a lot of such obelisks in Rome, more on that later. This city is full of buildings and fountains and whatnot and as you can see it's very easy to get distracted

and look, here's another church, I think this is the original Basilica. It's certainly very golden. I tried to change the white balance on my camera to capture it appropriately. Just imagine very very gold.

This is clearly a Catholic church through and through, although its builders still inscribed it entirely in Latin, as was their wont. And just down the hill, beside the old city centre and a new confluence of bus lines,

I don't know what this building was originally, but even in great disrepair it is beautiful. Here is the main event (Roman forum) at the top of a hill

and who can resist climbing those steps? Yes, I counted them -- 125 -- and I wasn't the only one counting

The view from the top was beautiful. (If your eye is drawn to the woman in red, stop, and go watch the matrix.)

This whole area is basically downtown ancient Rome, full of ruins and tastefully grown trees,

There are a series of churches and museums at the top of the hill now, although it was past closing time so all the guards and police were standing around chatting

Yeah, I don't know what's up with the segways, given how many stairs there are here. Whatever, they're fun I guess

There are a few statues here too, including "I don't have reception!"

and the famous Romulus/Remus statue, which is actually very small

One of the brothers had an eternal city, a civilization, and an empire named after him. The other had to settle for a downtrodden slave moon in Star Trek. :)

Sun is getting low now.

Back at ground level, there is a nice fountain with birds

at a beautiful facade

The moment the sun begins setting here in Rome, a few million swallows take to the sky

and let me tell you, I don't know the airspeed velocity of unladen European swallows, but it is quite fast enough to make them difficult to photograph. That's it for today!