After completing our tour of the Vatican we exited though the gate back into Rome. Since I had to check my backpack before we were allowed in at the beginning we had to walk back around the Museum entrance to retrieve it. We were all ready for a break so we decided to get lunch at a restaurant right across the street from the Vatican. Surprisingly we all order Italian food. Over lunch we planned out the rest of the day. There were three main things we wanted to see, the Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, and Spanish Steps.
Just outside of the Vatican it was clear that we were back in Rome.
After lunch we headed out. The walk was planned and led by Jon who was to keep us on task. Of course I was, too often, lagging behind taking pictures of flowers and such.
I was appropriately scolded to keep up, which worked for ten minutes or so.
I couldn't pass this shot. I suspect you have to wear this car not necessarily drive it.
We walked by many interesting streets with restaurants and shops spilling out into them.
As we turned a corner we saw this interesting arched wall with prominent parapets.
The wall is actually an elevated walk-way that the Pope and bishops used to walk between the Vatican and their living quarters off site. Apparently they needed a safe way to walk from point A to Point B without walking the regular streets with regular people.
As we followed the wall it generally lead to this structure which is the Castle of Sant' Angelo It looked more like a fort, but it apparently was, at one time, a place where Catholic Church officials stayed before they move to the Vatican.
Even though we had walked several blocks and turned many corners we would come out on a street that provided a nice vista of St. Peter's Basilica again.
We walked past the castle and across the bridge that led out from the castle crossing the river (Flume Te'vere). The river is a muddy algae coated river that probably has not been treated very well over the years. In the photo below I cropped out the construction debris and junk that was just piled on the river bank.
Some of the bridges over the river were pretty nice. I could almost envision horses and carriages passing over them. The one we walked over was pedestrians only probably not built for trucks.
The view up and down the river were nice anyway.
Here again are a few picturesque shots with the Basilica in the background.
On the far side of the bridge was a really nice tree lined walk beside the river, but we were heading somewhere else and didn't take that walk.
These are pretty typical street scenes that we would see for most of the rest of the day.
An interesting building that have been built on odd shaped lot.
Obviously these streets were not intended as major roadways. Even a small car seems to take up half of what needs is a two way street with two sidewalks.
Every block or two we would see another church. There is a boat load of Churches in Rome.
Streetscapes ranged from flat open plaza's paved with asphalt and potted plants to streets that just ended in stairs probably because of grade changes and slopes.
The streets also had a wide variety of odd and interesting elements. At some you could get a drink of water.
We began to notice interesting details in some buildings. This one had a portrait encased in the frame that was built right into the building.
Plenty of interesting shops. This one had Christmas ornaments by the basketful. Some were really ornate and I was not allowed in with my backpack.
We didn't spend a lot of time in antique shops, but in Europe antique shops have some really old stuff that make the ones in the U.S. look like ultra modern.
Another kind of shop that we saw here and several places we would visit, over the next several days, were the shops that sold masks. Some of them got to be pretty elaborate.
Every so often I would look up a narrow little street and see some interesting architectural feature famed by the scene.
Usually I would walk down the street a ways to get a better shot and then get scolded for not keeping up with the rest.
We came out onto this great open space called Plaza Navona. There were three nice fountains, middle and both ends, about half of the plaza space was occupied by artists selling their works. It was sort of like a huge art fair. Around the perimeter of the plaza were all sorts of buildings from residential to retail to another large church Sant' Agnese in Agone
Here is the fountain on the north end. We bought a couple of small prints that were nicely done, depicting some of the thing we had see that day or in that neighborhood.
There seemed to be a lot of fountains in Rome. They almost became common and you would just walk by them without noticing. I tried to at least stop and take a couple of pictures at each one.
Suddenly we were captured by an ice cream shop and a cool place to stop and sit for a few minutes.
They really take their ice cream seriously in Europe. This famous historical ice cream even put in a little cookie that came with an artistic print on it. Very tasty.
Here is the fountain in the center of the Plaza
Sant' Agnese church provided a nice shot with the sun peeking out from the dome.
The plaza was a very pleasant place even though there were lots of people there, it didn't seem to be that crowded.
We were able to get a tourist shot.
Here is another shot of a dome poking through the slot between buildings,
The fountain at the south end was quite different that the other two. Lots more moving water, and the sculptures were more spread out rather than bunched into a pile like some of the others.
It was time to move on we still had lots to see and miles to walk.
Even residential units that interesting features.
We walked past Sant'Andrea della Valle and across a nice plaza.
I noticed some stone columns sticking up so I suggested taking a look.
Looking to the left as we crossed the street was another Church. There is always another Church. This one is the Church of Gesu, it probably had elaborate interiors and it would have been nice to have checked it out, but there was no time. Instead we continued across the street to check out what looked like some ancient ruin.
We discovered this ruin which occupied a whole city block. This ruin (Largo di Torre Argentina) contains four temples from the Republic era (3rd-2nd Century BC). We only spent a few minutes here, and I did not know for sure what I was photographing until I had time to look on a map.
You can see that the original grade was much lower. We are standing on the city sidewalk about 12' above this area, which did give a nice vantage point from which I could take pictures.
It wasn't clear how much of this ruin had been reconstructed.
There were parts of it that seemed to be in pretty good shape.
Moving on.
You know that the streets must be small when a garbage truck is shorter than Clarice
Every so often as we would walk down some street we would spot something like this, an ancient wall abruptly sticking out from between a couple of modern buildings.
There were also plenty of tourist traps. and interesting streets.
We came upon this small plaza with an interesting pillar held up by an elephant. The building beyond the pillar is Santa Maria sopra Minerva. From the out side it looks pretty plain. This is the only Gothic church in Rome, built in the 13th century over the temple to Minerva and contains the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena
Just beyond the elephant's trunk is our first glimpse of the Pantheon one our target locations
Inside, however, this church was as elaborate and any other that we had been in.
We were surprised by the interior compared to the look of the outside
This church has lots of artwork, probably with Millions.
On to the Pantheon
At first glance the building looks like it is out of place, sort of an old poorly maintained structure but once we walked around the corner it was obvious this was quite the building.
The Pantheon was built by Emperor Hadrian in 125 AD and converted into a Church in 609 AD. It is the oldest intact Ancient building in Rome. We got there too late to be able to tour the inside of the building, but we did get several photos of the outside.
I was able to sneak a look at the interior from the portico and could see that the domed roof structure was of a coffered poured concrete system. Perhaps we will get a tour next time.
The entrance had significant columns that were quite impressive.
I had to get all the way to the far side of this plaza beyond the bikers above to get the shot below.
The neighborhood built up around the plaza in front of the Pantheon does not fit the quality of that wonderful old building. We needed to move on.
Along the way there was this interesting memorial .
We stopped for a few minutes at Sant' Lgnazio to watch the bride and groom come out under the crossed swords.
This old Bently was the get away car. Moving on we headed down some more narrow streets.
Every so often we would see a Ferrari store.
We got to Trevi Fountain to find out that we were not the only ones that thought we should seed it and have a picture taken in front of it.
This famous fountain is in front of major building and has a fairly large plaza to accommodate the crowds. It is a pretty impressive. the detail in the sculptures was as good as anything we had seen elsewhere in Rome.
We got the compulsory photos and then I tried to work my way through the crowd to get some close up shots.
The workmanship and way the sculpture was worked right into the building facade was really cool.
Karen decided to not fight the crowd and waited on the upper plaza level. Where's Waldo?
Clarice took a shot of me throwing a coin in the fountain.
I took quite a few shots of the fountain even though the lighting was not all that good this might be the only time I will be here so more shots seemed better than less.
We needed to move on to the next thing. We decided that we would come back later that evening and see this with the night lighting.
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