Travels Around Roma Part XI: Tivoli Villa D'este

Well here is the rest of Villa D'este, the actual Villa itself that is.

First off we start with the internal courtyard, which looks like this.  I have been lazy on my blogging so I actually don't remember this because it was so long ago (about 4 months ago as of now), but I'll pretend like I know what I'm talking about.

Here is a closeup of the middle carving.  Quite beautiful.  What it is I have no idea but it still is pretty cool.  

Here we see the internal chapel.  The chapel was in a room but it still had windows and a door leading to it for privacy and to imitate a stand-alone church.  Its pretty well done I must say...

After I walked down one hallway (there is a hallway for each floor) I got to a corner room. You can see the door on the left. The carpets on the walls are pretty exquisite as well...

Like this one, a better view of the one above.  There are tons of these on all the walls, and knowing that they are all hand made with the finest quality and craftmenship just makes me want to be a rich Italian...

Here we enter the room of Socrates.  And all of this is painting designed to look three-dimensional, which it does a decent job of doing. 

Even though every part of all the walls is painted, the roof is usually the best part and this doesn't disappoint.  Here we have the incarnations of liberty, nobility, and generosity all sitting on clouds doing what they do. 

Here is another room I went into.  The detail on every inch of every wall is just something that I actually got used to.  But now as I sit in my college apartment on Nobel Drive I see literally plane undecorated white everywhere and not an inch of decoration on any wall.  Literally nothing because nobody cares.  Why not just one fresco or just one fine painting of some flying angel in my apartment?  Oh well...

Here is another roof of another room in the long hallway.  The detail of this is actually more intricate that probably the last room if that's possible. But as they say, when in Rome... (never mind we're in Tivoli)

Here is one of the paintings on a wall that I really liked.  Simple yet elegant with the man walking his donkey up the hill to the barn/mill.  And the colors flow really nicely.  

These hallways all have a view of the garden, and this is one view from a window.  Remember this balcony, because you can spot it in the pictures from the garden.  

Here is another room I saw.

And here is still another room.  The roof is painted to look like it has columns, but it is actually flat.  Even looking at it from underneath it still looked like it had columns.  

 

jk

k

jj

Now we enter the Room of Moses, with various paintings about Moses featuring this one where he extracts water from the rock while wandering in the desert for 40 years.  After this are the life and times of Moses collection, all in the orange colors below.

 

 

Below is a series of pictures of the Manica Lunga, which is designed to echo the pleasant sound of water dripping from the fountains built into the walls.  That and the mosiacs and skylights make this a winner.  That's it for Tivoli. Ciao!

Travels Around Roma Part XX: Il Papa!

Its fitting that I have 20 sections for being around Roma, because I was 20 when I was there and it has been the highlight of my twenties so far.  So far I have shown you pretty much everything about Roma except for one thing, or should I say one man.  The head honcho or Roma himself that is, Pope Benedict XVI.  I took a Science and Religion class and our professor was a Catholic priest, and he told us that this pope is very quite, introverted, and likes to read and study a lot.  This is a polarized juxtaposition from the last pope, John Paul II, who was crazy and invited random people over to the Vatican and liked to go alpine skiing a lot, making everyone nervous about his safety all the time.  Well it turns out the pope speaks every Wednesday morning, and while I was walking to school during my last week before finals, I happened to catch a glimpse of him.  I stayed for a while, so much so that I was late to my Modern Italy Culture and Identity class by about 10 min (I ended up getting an A in that class anyways, so it doesn't matter).  And for some reason I happened to have my camera on me so I was in luck.  I stood in one place (you had to pass through security to get into the piazza, which I didn't feel like doing) and zoomed on at various times to see il Papa.


Here is the view I saw, typical of St. Peter's but with a crowd.  So I zoomed in with my camera to see more.

There is Benny himself on the big screen, but where is he in person?

Ecco!!! (Here it is!) He's right in the middle under this little tent surrounded by two cardinals.  And his guards (the Swiss guards I assume) surround that with their funny red hats.  They also embarrass themselves with clown shoes, but that must be seen in person. 

I zoomed out a little more...

And I returned to normal view of the usual St. Peter's Basilica.  I literally walked by this everyday on the way to school, so I actually got tired to seeing it.  But I really liked how it changed colors and looked different depending on the lighting of the sky/time of day.  The roof is copper green at nighttime, which I loved.  

Well that about concluded it for this blog.  I had finals week and then I left on December 12th, 2009 back to Los Angeles.  Our flight was scheduled to go to Heathrow with British Airways, but the London fog cancelled our flight (for like 30 people in my program too).  There was a lot of hassle and arguing with airport officials at the airport, but we eventually got rerouted to Munich and then from Munich to LAX through Luftanza Air, which is smaller than British Air and not as nice. I ordered multiple glasses of champagne from them to make up for this difference. (Relax people, I was fine). When we finally got to Munich we literally had around 10 minutes from when our flight landed to when the next flight left.  There was someone from the airport waiting for us and taking us exactly to our terminal really quickly so we could make the flight, which we did.  The flight to LAX was really really long (around 14 hours) and I watched Pelham 123, The Time Traveler's Wife, Arabic Music videos, an episode of Frasier, and episode of Everybody Hates Chris, and anything else that would kill time.  And I was flying with all my friends but we all got random seating on the new flight, so needless to say it was a looooooong flight.  Eventually we all got to LAX and got picked up from the international flight waiting center that still looks like it does when it was made in the '80s.  And after not driving for 4 months, I immediately drove on the 405 freeway from LAX back home.  I did the math since my original flight was around noon and I woke up at 8am to get ready and leave for Fiumicino airport at 9am, it took me 24 hours of real time to go from my bed in Via Candia to my bed back home in L.A.  Soon after I got back I had vivid flashbacks of Roma but they are now subsiding more or less. And that's where my story ends.  Now I am back to my normal life but my life abroad will always live on in this blog forever.  Ciao!

Travels Around Roma Part XVI: Vista Atop the V.E. II Monument

When I got back from Florence on a Sunday about noon, I had a whole day to myself.  After I went to the Surrealist Museum I went to the Vittorio Emmanuele Monument.  I visited the National Museum dedicated to the Risorgimento, or the Reunification of Italy in 1870 when the power was taken away from the papacy and put  in the hands of King Vittorio Emmanuele I.  That really wasn't too interesting, so then I paid to take the elevator on top of the monument to get a pretty good view of Roma.  The museum itself just has a bunch of swords and flags that are supposed to be important, but at the end of the day they really aren't.

First I walked up the stairs of the monument pictured at the right to get a good view.  I actually did that before I entered the museum but lets not get into details here.  They had a series of posters showing you a picture of the view you were seeing and then labeling the important buildings. And then after that I went to the roof, where the winged chariots are.  

Here is the poster, which you should keep in mind for a vista picture below.  Zoom in on this if you want. 

This is Trajan's Market, from the ancient Roman times.  The thing I like about Roma is the different historical levels all at one.  This includes ancient Roman Imperial times, the Medieval times, the Renaissance, the Counter-Reformation, the Baroque period, the Fascist period, and finally modern Italy (good luck finding that one, because there are no skyscrapers in Rome).  According to the internet,is Trajan's Market is a large complex of warehouses, offices, and shops, build between 107 and 110 AD where Romans would meet to purchase goods, conduct business, and generally have a good time.  It was built by Emperor Trajan's favorite architect, Apollodorus of Damascus, who designed the Forum which borders the market as well. 

 Also, here's a bird standing right above the sign shown earlier, with Trajan's market in the background barely. 

And of course a closeup of the bird.  It wasn't scared of me so I got kind of close and took this picture and another one just like it.  You can see Trajan's Market behind him, where his ancestors probably flew as well.

After this I actually went up to the elevator to the roof the monument, or the "Wedding Cake" as the Romans affectionately call it.  These are some of the best pictures of Roma that I took because I could literally see the whole city.  These views are not as good as those from the top of Villa Borghese and on the hills atop Trastevere (sorry, no pictures) because those are clear unobstructed views... Andiamo! (Here we go!)

Here is one of the two Winged Chariots put in by (guess who?) Mussolini, who put in everything in Rome because he was obsessed with Rome.  However the feelings were not mutual and Mussolini was eventually executed.  Nevertheless, a lot of his stuff lives in, especially right here in the heart of Rome.  However we are also looking in the Northwest direction, which is the direction of the Vatican and where I lived while I was in Rome.  You can see the dome of St. Peter's (however you can't see Residence Candia unfortunately) and if you follow the straight path called Viale Della Conciliazione (made by Mussolini, which leveled numerous historic buildings, including Raphael's palace), you can see Castel Sant'Angelo at the right edge just below the horizon.  Its the cylinder castle building.  Look back to one of the first posts to see what that looks like.

Here is the view shifted slightly to the right.  Lets follow along now, don't get lost. 

The main street leading down is Via del Corso I believe.  The grass right before that on the right is Piazza Venezia, one of the biggest piazzas in Roma.  It is a roundabout for traffic and a tourist herding spot. 

This is Via del Corso which leads to Piazza del Popolo which has an obelisk.  As mentioned earlier, the model capitol hill leading to an obelisk in a straight rode in Washington D.C. came from this.  

We shift to the right (east) a little more to see more of Roma.  It is worth noting that Mussolini tore down everything surrounding this monument to make it stand out.  By that I mean that all the open road and space you see besides Via Del Corso was all buildings after building.  All gone. 

A view of the Colosseum and the straight road from that to the Campidoglio, the Via dei Fori Imperiali.  When you see a straight road in Rome that connects major monuments, you know it was created by Mussolini.  So yeah, yay fascism...

Another similar view.  I can never get enough...

Here is a view of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum ruins. Caesar, Augustus, and all the Senators lived here on the Capitolino.  All the buildings were very tall back in the day so imagine grand marble buildings all at least 10 stories long with all the riches of the entire empire being funneled here. 

Here is a closeup of where I lived with the dome of St. Peter's and Castel Sant'Angelo.  Of course there is a straight road connecting them, the Viale della Conciliazone, so I'm sure you can guess who made that. 

Here is a (slightly blurry) view of this road from the street providing the il colosseo as the strada con fondale, or the road with a backdrop. It reminds me a bit of Paris. 

Moving rightward from the Forum ruins we come across another familiar aspect of Roma.  This of course is the Theatre of Marcellus (the mini Colosseum) and the rione Ebraico.  You can see the synagogue of Roma right under the glare.  

Well this bird is telling us that this post is over... ciao!

Travels Around Roma Part XVII: I Musei Vaticani Finisci

Now we end our Vatican Museum travels, with the best for last.  As I kept going through the Museum I saw more frescoes like this.  When it comes to Italian frescoes, every inch of every wall is always covered.  Nothing is left white ever.  So to think how much time and effort was spent painting this all by hand, especially on the angles, is pretty cool.

This is another fresco, but the picture is rotated so the frescoes make sense visually.  The roof is on the left. 

And here is another picture of some judgement or something.  I don't exactly know what it is but I'm sure its significant. 

And now on to the most famous part of the Museum, the Sistene Chapel itself.  They actually don't allow people to take pictures there, but everybody does.  One guard even put his hand in front of my lens and then told me "no pictures."  That coupled with my camera faltering meant I only got a few pictures, and half of those were blurry.  But I still got some good pictures.

Here is a hall leading to the Sistine Chapel.  Believe it or not the art is actually getting finer as we go along.

Here is the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel.  Notice the topmost frame.  All of these are scenes from the Bible, with Creation being the first one.

Here is a closeup of the famous frame of Adam being given life.  But how did Michaelangelo get my features so perfectly in his fresco.  We will never know...

I have to admit this was the only thing I knew about the Sistine Chapel was the Creation fresco.  I was really surprised when I saw frescoes of Moses.  That's right! The life of Moses is a series of paintings inside the Sistine Chapel. I tried really hard to get all of these pictures, but this is the only good one I could get.

The rest of the pictures are, in order: the Garden of Eden in some huge painting, some gold goblet or big cup, some painting with gods and goddesses, a carpet depicting the Last Supper, and two sarcophagi from ancient Rome. Well, thats all for this museum.  Ciao e a presto!! (bye and see you later)...