Day 22: Singapore

I wonder what the Romans would have thought of Singapore – a mainly reclaimed island full of novel architecture?  I saw some of these on a free 2 hour tour of the city.  Examples are the buildings include the three towers with a boat like structure bridging them and the office towers with sharp edges.

We arrived in Singapore at 5.30 am local time after a smooth 11 hour flight from Rome. Having booked into a transit hotel for the day, I left Maureen to sleep and went on the tour to kill some time.  We stopped off at China town which was gearing up for Chinese New Year and also passed through the Indian quarter.  I picked some interesting information about Singapore:

• Being just north of the Equator , Singapore sits between 25-34Degrees C all year around and between 75-95% humidity
• The process of reclamation of land so it is ready to build on takes 20 years.
• Singapore was a State of Malaysia for 2 years after independence (1963-1965)
• Everyone lives in high rise towers most of which is public housing.  Howver to qualify for public housing you need to be 21 or older, married and have children – no place here for singles or single parents.
• If children are not at school without good reason, their parents may be gaoled.  Also chewing gum is banned!

We will arrive in Adelaide at 9 am- looking forward to muesli and toast for breakfast!

Day 21: A trip to remember

looking towards St Peter's Square

On our last day before leaving for Australia we returned to St Peter's for midday 'Messe' at the left transept (Chapel of Saint Joseph).  A good experience but with tourists taking shots of you during Mass - must be a curiosity for people unfamiliar with religion.  


We then found the tomb of John Paul II and spent time there in prayer and reflection.  As I met and shook hands with him in 1995 it was very moving to be at his tomb and think about his wonderful life and what he achieved through difficult times from 1978-2005.  He is definitely one of my heroes. 


We walked back along the Tiber and diverted to Campo di'Fiore (I talked about yesterday) which was full of stalls selling food, fruit and veges, flowers, spices etc - a special place.  We had coffee and great homemade cheeseake on the square looking out on all the activity.

Rome- Jewish Ghetto 1879

Our final excursion before we departed was a hard choice but we decided to go to the Jewish Roman Museum just across the river from Trastevere.  We were frisked on entry as there was an awful terrorist attack here in 1982 that killed an innocent child and I suppose it could still be a target.  The synagogue and museum were powerful and confronting, chronicling the history of this small, resilient community. The first documented Jews in Rome were in 161 BCE and we know that many were brought as slaves by Emperor Titus after the sack and ruin of Jerusalem in 70 AD.  The Roman Jewish community march through the Arch of Titus in the Roman Forum each year on the anniversary of the establishment of State of Israel in response to the frieze on the arch which shows the Jewish treasures and slaves being brought to Rome as captives in 71 AD.  


We had been to the Jewish quarter previously but learned of the frequent discrimination and disadvantage that they faced here over the last 2.2 centuries including the genocide by the Nazis in 1943-1944. In the synagogue the places at the front are reserved for the families of the 16 Holocaust survivors from the 'round up' of October 1943 and the other survivors from the deportations to the camps over the following months prior to liberation of Rome in June 1944. 


Here is a website if you are interested but  I will give one example: The Jewish ghetto in Rome was created in 1555 and was walled in  at the same level as the Tiber, subject to frequent flooding, close to the Porta Octavia and the Theatre of Marcellis.  The ghetto was very impoverished and Jews were persecuted and restricted in many of their professions and practices which were not really removed until 1870 when the Papal States became part of an united Italy.  However in 1938 Mussolini and the Fascists went back to the 'bad old days' with severe restrictions and Jews made to abandon religious practices and do forced labour.  


What is good to know is that the community is thriving and integrated, very conscious of its history, whilst not being sentimental.  In fact there was a split in the community in the 1990s about Israels treatment of the Palestinians.


Another special day for us and a trip to remember- and I need to pack!

Day 20: Barbareni Palace to Cabonara

Beatrice Cenci

Palazza del Barberini

There were sculptured bees all over the Barberini Palace added a nice touch to the gallery that we visited there. At either side of the front are two stair cases both in marble and equally impressive - one by Bernini ascending around a square and the other, which was a spiral, by his contemporary and rival Boromini . Inside the Barberini Palace Gallery was another array of masters but I will just mention the ones I liked best:

• Portrait of Beatrice Cenci by Guido Reni.  The story behind it is very sad (she was beheaded on Ponte S'Angelo with other family members for involvement in the murder of her abusive father).

• The 'Judith and Holifernes' by Caravaggio along with his 'Narcissus'
• The sculpture (probably) by Antonio Corradini of the veiled 

  

  veiled vestal virgin

  
  vestal virgin who carried the water of the Tiber in a sieve to prove her innocence against accusations. This is extraordinary as the veil in marble appears to be a veil over the top of the statue. 
• The star of the gallery is the luminous 'La Fornarina' by 

  

  La Fornarina

  
  Raphael - a portrait of his mistress and there is a real story behind it. The effect of this painting is mesmerizing - the face with bright, dark eyes follow you around the room. The half smile at you makes you also want to smile. As an uninformed viewer I rank this as better than the Mona Lisa. 

On the way to a return visit to the Trevi Fountain we entered the intersection of the Via della Quatre Fontane (Road of the four fountains ) and the Via Quirinale.  At this intersection are four fountains on each corner.  

One of 4 fountains

The water comes from an ancient aqueduct and is still drinkable.  From this point one can see right down to the obelisk in Piazza del Popolo and in the other direction, Santa Maria Maggiore.  From here we walked down the Via Quirinale on the Quirinale hill of Rome to the Palazzo del Quirinale. As this is the highest hill in Rome it has been used since ancient times and Constantine I put baths here.  Many 

Palazza del Quirinale

Popes and rulers lived in the Palace where the Italian President now lives.  

With Maureen going up the main shopping strip the 'Corso' ( I was able to go to an exhibition on the influence of Raphael and Michelangelo on renaissance art in Rome. This had a number of original pieces and a lot of documents especially about Michelangelo's plans and drawings for St Peter's Basilica and Raphael's plans to do an audit of all the ruins in Rome (never done). The paintings after these two Masters followed their style. For example paintings of the Deposition (taking Jesus down from the Cross) followed Michelangelo's pietas with showed the anatomical characteristics of a pale, limp dead body. This exhibition helped me understand the movements in art such as Mannerism a little more. One point of interest: there was an original of the crucifixion by Michelangelo which showed a very muscular Jesus. 

Trevi

On the way back to Trastevere I went back to the St Ignatius Loyola Church to have a closer look at the false cupola (ceiling painted so it looks like a cupola). On my walk back I passed through Campo De'Fiori one of the most popular piazzas in Rome. I will bring Maureen back here.  The piazza is arranged with restuarants and stalls right around the outside and is so inviting. In the middle is a bronze statue of the 17th century Dominican priest, philosophizer, and scientist Giordano Bruno. He fell foul of the church by pushing Copernicus's ideas of heliocentrism (planets go around the sun) and contesting many absolute views of the time. He wandered all over Europe but was brought back to Rome to face the Inquisition and after a n

Campo de'Fiore

umber of years in prision was burned at the stake at Campo de'Fiori and his ashes thrown in the Tiber. However he is remembered still in the square and some of his ideas were later shown to have merit.


We finished the day at a local Trastevere restaurant where I sampled Cabonara  'Trastevere style'.  It had lots of bacon!  

Day 19: Walking Three Hills of Rome

Baths

Baths

Today was mainly a walking tour heading out over Ponte Palatino across the Tiber and on the Aventine Hill above the Circus Maximus where we passed the taxi drivers congregating for a protest against the government austerity measures.  We traveled down the Appian Way to San Callisto, the largest of the dozen or so excavated catacombs of Rome (there are apparently 1100).  San Callisto has four levels spread over 90 acres and date from the beginning of the 3rd century.  They have both Christian and non Christian graves but many of the former as they were used as places of prayer during persecutions.  There are 16 bishops of Rome and lots of martyrs buried there.  The tombs, family tombs, underground chapels were adorned with frescoes which reveal lots about what was happening at the time.  The Christian symbols mainly used in the frescoes are doves, olive branches, Jonah and the whale, Jesus as a shepherd, the anchor and, later, the ☧ (Chi Rho) symbol used first by Constantine after his 312 CE victory at the Milvian Bridge.   


We made our way back to the city in bus 118 (only come every 1/2 hr) and stopped off at the Baths of Caracalla.  Caracalla was Emperor from 211-17 CE and thought he was chanelling Alexander the Great so wanted a BIG monument.  The baths were certainly that:  

• could fit up to 1500 bathers at any time
• used ~15-20  ML fresh water a day brought in via aqueduct
• gainfully employed 1000 slaves to heat water, clean etc
• had a complex of shops, gardens, 2 libraries, gymnasiums, pools, massage rooms, spas, saunas, dilaptariums, toilets, change rooms etc.  Only thing close now would be an Olympic Village.

Here is a pic of what they looked like: 



These baths were not a big as Diocletians later but were still enormous and were used until 537 when the invading Goths cut off the water.  There were still lots of the original mosaic left and some marble although most of it was nicked for later projects.  Two two huge statues that were dug up in the 16th century ('Farnese Bull' and 'Hercules') are now in Naples. 

mosaic floor at Baths of Caracalla

Some trivia: Caracalla has a bad reputation because his marble bust is unflattering, and he had most of his family and many rivals killed.  However he was a good military commander and actually granted all free men in the Roman Empire full Roman citizenship (not women but still progressive) .  He was eventually murdered by a soldier in 217 CE.  

From the baths we walked up the Caelian hill (one of the seven) which overlooks the valley in which the Colosseum sits and looks across to the Palatine Hill.  We stopped for lunch at a restaurant overlooking the Colosseum - great view (food not as good!) and then up the valley to the Church of San Clemente which has four levels: 12 century basilica built over 4th century church built over first century Roman house next to a Mithraic temple (roman cult).  As we could not take photos here is a good tour of the levels.  This basilica is a great for understanding how things were built on top of each other and also has great religious significance with the tomb of Saint Clement (3rd bishop of Rome and well historically documented) and St Cyril (9th Century) here. Our reflections in the basilica were cut short by a mob of French school children ( I am getting old) so we continued our walk now up the next hill (The Esquilline) on which were Nero's enormous home (Domus Aurea) and Trajan's Baths.  Both of these structures are mainly underground and a lot of archaeological work is going on there. The Domus Aurea is closed for visitors.

Moses by Micheangelo

There are lots of churches on teh Esquiline hill including 'San Pietro in Vincoli' which we visited to see the famous statue of 'Moses' done by Michelangelo for the tomb of Pope Julius II. Moses is part of teh huge marble memorial and interesting has horns on his head. You can look up the reasons why Michelangelo did this!  Moses was another seminal example of Michelangelo being able to craft marble like butter and liberate three dimensional figures correct both anatomically and proportionally.

Final stop not far from the main station and still on the Esquiline Hill was the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore (Mary Major) (one of the five great ancient basilicas of Rome built in 5th Century). I could not take good pictures but here is a fantastic website with views around this truly beautiful basilica. Notable features of the basilica were the apse mosaic (5th Century later than St Cosmos and Damian), ornate Borghese Chapel, the tomb of Bernini (famous 17th century architect, painter, sculptor and planner who shaped much of renaissance Rome). It is still a busy place for prayer and devotion and we were able to reflect there for an hour as the evening closed in.

We finished a great day with pasta near the Termini station and ten a bus ride home.  If you ever come to Rome avoid eating near the main tourist spots - expensive and ordinary!

Day 18: Florence always has more

Pieta with Michelangelo

Florence is so lovely and compact it is easy to walk the whole city.  Today was cold again and first stop was the Bargello Palace museum which houses a number of important art works including Donatello's bronze 'David' as a young man, and the 'full- bellied' sculpture of Bacchus (the God of Wine) as a young man by Michelangelo.  The first of these was significant in that it was the first nude statue of the Renaissance! 

Donatello's Mary Magdalene 

We had another look around the Duomo including the museum which contained the renown 'Pieta' with Michelangelo as one of the figures in the scene taking Jesus from the Cross...  another unfinished work but still very powerful.


Under under the current cathedral is the original 4th century church dedicated to Saint Reparata  and we did an audio guide tour which showed the extent of the church, tombs including that of Brunelleschi (designer of new Cathedral dome)  and yet more beautiful mosaic floors.  As the train back to Rome did not leave until 3.45 pm we also had time to look at the Galileo Museum near the Arno.  This has won many awards and is a must see if you are interested in 

Galileo's telescopes that started revolution in science

the history of science, of which Florence was a major player early on.  We saw Galileo's original telescopes and a lot of his other instruments as well as an array of astronomical, navigational (maps, globes) and other early scientific items.   Galileo's mind and telescopes got him into trouble with the church but opened up astronomy and all science in a new way by sparking the use of lenses and the importance of 'observation.'  He was a genius!

Ponte Vecchio

It was sad to leave beautiful Florence - so much we could not do!  I had a quick look around the Basilica Santa Maria Novella on the way to the train station.  The Catholic Council of Florence was held here and , again, many famous Florentine artists featured in its building.


By evening it was nice to get back to our little apartment in Trastevere, have a cup of tea and toilet and  shower in more than a shoe box (reference to our hotel bathroom in Florence).

Day 17: All this in Florence

 Our second day in Florence was well below zero as we made our way to the other main gallery: ‘The Acadamie’.  This houses the famous ‘David’ and five other Michelangelo sculptures  - the four unfinished 'Prisoners' and 'St. Matthew (Pieta) '.  As you go into the hall with David in the distance you are greeted by 2 huge unfinished sculptures down each side of the hall. These are called Young Slave' and 'Atlas' on one side and 'Awakening Slave' and 'Bearded Slave' on the other.  Michelangelo held the view (not original) that a figure/sculpture needed to be released from the marble rather than carved in it.  These unfinished pieces prepare us for the great 'finished' work of David (5.17 M) that took 4 years to be liberated from the marble.  You would come to come to Florence just to see 'David' and we hung around this hall for over an hour going around and around the statue.  The anatomy of this giant piece is precise including the veins in the arms and hands.  Apparently there is a minor flaw in that a wrist muscle put in the right hand does not actually exist.  

The rest of the museum was good (Lippi, Botticelli etc)  but a little anti-climactic! We watched a really interesting video on the process used to paint wooden panels on which many 13-15th century works were done.  The painstaking and makes one appreciate this art even more.

There was also an exhibition of Renaissance musical instruments which was fascinating and included the oldest Stradivarius cello and violin (1690).  They had the sounds of these instruments which was richer than anything I had heard  - am searching for a CD!

After lunch I climbed the bell tower for some more stunning views of the city while Maureen did some window shopping - seemed much more expensive than Rome.

San Croce facade

Then we headed for another famous church: San Croce built for the Franciscans (1442).  This church is also enormous and is simple Gothic style with a 'T' floor plan like the Franciscan cross and was the model for may other churches. The Franciscans had the tombs put in the floor with the slabs to be walked on as a sign that death should be faced with simplicity and that it is how one lived rather than the size of their tomb which was important.  There are many tombs of famous people including: Galileo (science) (as he was excommunicated he was not allowed a 

Galileo's tomb in San Croce

Michelangelo's tomb in San Croce

Christian burial but the Friars buried him there without the Vatican knowing), Michelangelo (art), Dante (literature), Machiavelli (politics), Rossini (opera), Bruno (politics and philosophy) and others.  The tomb of poet Nicolini has a figure that was used as the model for The Statue of Liberty.

The cathedral has lots of frescos by famous 13-14th century painter Giotto and, in the museum, the oldest crucifix showing Christ dying on it (pioneered by St Francis) by Cimabue the teacher of Giotto.

  

With time on our hands we wanted to get a bit more of the history of Florence so went to the Museum di Palazzo Vecchio which was open until late.  This palace is the historical seat of government of Florence and home for some time of the famous Medici dynasty and many other rulers.  The art in the palace including a huge fresco by Michelangelo and also Da Vinci captures the trtured history of Florence in its development as a republic and later as captila of the Kingdoms of Italy.  The rooms are ornate - it really is a place.  There is also in the main hall the unfinished sculpture of David by Michelangelo called 'Genius of Victory'. as a well as works by Donatello who was at his peak ~100 years before Michelangelo.

Piazza San Croce at dusk

In 1492, the Italian Renaissance philosopher Ficino (1433-1499),  wrote a letter from Florence to his friend, Paul of Middelburg. Here is some of it:

'If then we are to call any age golden, it is beyond doubt that age which brings forth golden talents in different places. That such is true of this our age few will hardly doubt. For this century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and all this in Florence. Achieving what had been honored among the ancients, but almost forgotten since, the age has joined wisdom with eloquence, and prudence with the military art. In you also, my dear Paul, this century appears to have perfected astronomy, and in Florence it has recalled the Platonic teaching from darkness into light.'

Day 16: Firenze- city of art

The fast train from Rome purred us to Florence who met us with a sunny winter day.  It gets much cooler here than in Rome (-8 deg C one night) but warms up to around 8-10 deg C during the day. 

The cupola from the bell tower

First stop was the Santa Maria de Fiore (Cathedral of Florence or 'Duomo' ) a central point in Florence and a truly beautiful structure from the outside with facades of 'white Carrara, green Prato and red Siena marble' and ornate decorations especially around the doors. We headed up the cupola which has 463 steps, although it seemed a little easier than St Peter's cupola.  The Duomo is 45.52 metres 

on cupola looking towards bell tower

across and was designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.  The problem in 1418, when the church was being renovated, was that no-one had built a dome that big without reinforcement. The Pantheon is 43.3 M but was a different design (hole in top) which would not work for the cathedral.  St Peters is 41.47 M but this was finished in 1590 (over 100 years later).  Brunelleschi’s brilliant design was used to help figure out the best way to complete the St Peter’s cupola and football stadiums etc up to the present.  There is a great sculpture of him in the square looking up at the dome!

Anyway the views were worth it both of the inside of the frescoed cupola and of the city of Florence.

Baptistry doors

At the entrance end of the Cathedral is the famous Baptistry built over an Estruscan village/Roman fort in an octagonal shape.  This is equally as impressive as the cathedral with stunning gilded Bronze doors depicting stories from the old Testament ( I would bore you with details) and inside, a painted Byzantine ceiling depicting lots of stories of Old and New Testament and the Saints, generously gilded. When you walk in and look up you feel as if you may be swept up at any moment …the ceiling has the effect of connecting the ‘glory of the heavens’ depicted with the baptismal font and celebration of baptism which in Christian belief fills the baptised with the heavens (Holy Spirit).

The Uffizi Gallery is probably the most celebrated in Florence and sits at the edge of the Piazza

Piazza del Signore looking at Palazzo Vecchio

 della Signore which is the main square.  This square has a amazing history of conflict, celebration, burning at the stake etc.  Originally Michelangelo’s statue of David was placed here (it got damaged a couple of times) as a symbol of the small city state of Florence taking on the world (Goliath).  The Florentines drew inspiration from it when they kicked out the Medici rulers and made a republic (The Medici made a come back with Papal and Napolese armies later). We could not take photos in the gallery but here is the website. 

The array of masterpieces was overwhelming but I will name a few:

• Leonardo Da Vinci – ‘The Annunciation’
• ‘The Birth of Venus’ and ‘The Allegory of Spring’ by Sandro Botticelli.  I have added pic the first of these from the web so you may recognise.
• Lots of work by Giotto and his school
• ‘Holy Family (Doni Tondo) ’ Michelangelo
• ‘Bacchus’ by Carravaggio

  You will have to look the others up if you are interested.

looking upstream from Ponte Vecchio bridge

After the gallery we walked along the banks of the Arno and across the famous Ponte Vecchio (bridge crossing river Arno which flows through the city).  This bridge was full of people strolling and window shopping the exclusive jewellery shops both sides.