Rome Trip Report, Day 4a: San Giovanni, San Clemente, Pantheon, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Palazzo Massimo

MAY 23, 2014, Friday:

Rome Day 4a, 2014: San Giovanni, San Clemente, Pantheon, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Palazzo Massimo

OUR VIDEOS:

https://picasaweb.google.com/108910506663540711253/6272982759068429265#6274403759221528002

Rome Day 4a: San Giovanni Laterano, San Clemente

https://picasaweb.google.com/108910506663540711253/6272982759068429265#6274413321840431746

Rome day 4b: Bath basilica, Palazzo Massimo, Santa Maria Maggiore

We had booked 7 pm slot for the night opening of Vatican on Friday and that was the main focus of the day. We did want to utilize the morning and afternoon well, at the same time had to be fresh enough for the evening too.

St. John Lateran Archbasilica (San Giovanni in Laterano)

As usual we started the day early, got into our trusted bus 571 at 7.30 am… got down at the Piazza de San Giovanni in Laterano and walked towards the majestic church.

Now this is the cathedral of Rome—the official chair of the holy Pope… yes, even higher than St Peter’s basilica!

 It bears the honor with such dignity— Large statues of Christ and the saints, dating from the 18th century, top the lofty façade. 

Next to the entrance is a plaque with the archbasilica's claim to being the head mother church in the world--Omnium urbis et orbis Ecclesiarum Mater et Caput:  Mother and Head of all the churches of the city and the world is the google translation!

We enter an open two-storied portico, at one end of it stands the statue of Constantine the Great, which was found in the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian. The central bronze doors are Roman originals from the Curia (Senate House) in the Imperial Forum!

Inside are numerous marble columns and the focus is of course the papal cathedra in the apse richly decorated with a ceiling of mosaic.

The floor of the nave is remarkable—it is a Cosmatesque pavement, a technique of mosaic at first developed in the 12^th century by the Family Cosmati who lived some 30 miles from Rome: on white marble, geometric patterns like squares, circles, parallelograms of darker marble are inlaid and surrounded by colored and gold glass pieces. (We got to see such work in many places in Rome, Vatican of course has the most profuse and elaborate specimens all over the floors!)

To come back to Giovanni basilica, there are statues of the apostles and there is relief work above that and paintings in oval frames in the top tier--everything is awesome.  There is a lovely baldachin also.

We came out into pouring rain…. Our obelisk was getting drenched but I guess it did not mind as it must have endured quite a few drops since its birth in 1400 BC…

The Lateran Obelisk, a red granite monolith is the tallest obelisk (45.7m) in Rome, and the largest standing ancient Egyptian obelisk in the world, weighing 455 tons.

Thankfully we had taken our mandatory pics with the Lateran obelisk before we went into the church…  

A horde of vendors with umbrellas had descended on the square. We did have one umbrella, so started walking to our next church San Clemente. We were looking out for Santa scala also…but missed it. We walked down a long street trying to get directions for St Clemente from anyone we could see on the street.

We came by a church…Santa Maria…something and I went in… the nuns were at prayer inside… there was one nun on a chair right near the entrance. I stood hesitantly near her wondering how discourteous it is to interrupt… she turned to me with a smile… I said Buongiorno sister… dove chiesa san clemente por favor? She gave directions in Italian with gestures and I could make out we have to keep going straight. After a grateful Grazie to her, we were off.

San Clemente

We reached San Clemente, after looking at the main church, went to their counter to get tickets for the other layers under the main church… now this proved highly enjoyable.

http://www.basilicasanclemente.com/index.php/tour/xii-century-basilica

has some good pics of the various levels

We walked through excavated layers and it was a travel back in time… down we went and saw the 12^th century basilica ; further down a 4^th century basilica with lovely frescoes and the 1^st century pagan temple below and came to a noble man’s house still further down… with the gush of water now audible… we saw grates under which a subterranean stream flowed and water was gushing in one of the rooms also… there were well carved out seats in some of the rooms and every room looked well planned. The wealthy had really done themselves justice even in those times!!

This is the Mithraic temple.

This is the underground stream

There were bilingual explanations of what we were seeing in quite a few places and it was such an adventure going on this archeological expedition—with everything cleaned up and presented on a plate for us to savor!

Pantheon

We came out, the rain had abated and the sun was shining! We walked on and reached Pantheon next, from its rear… which I feel is the best way to see it first…we could see how old the whole structure is. There is scaffolding but it did not detract from the impact.

The piazza was milling with crowds…we took some pics of the mighty façade.

Of course the ubiquitous obelisk in the Piazza della Rotunda, caught our attention—just 6.34 m high (totally 14.52 m with the pedestal) but with impressive credentials of coming from the Ra Temple in Heliopolis and belonging to the era of Ramesses the Great (reigned 1279–1213 BC).  

We gave the obelisk its due

We marveled at the 16 huge columns in the portico of Pantheon, especially at the story of how they made their way here from their quarry in Egypt--each column 39 feet (11.9 m) tall, 5 feet (1.5 m) in diameter, and 60 tons in weight was dragged 100 km (62 miles) from the quarry in Egypt to the river on wooden sledges. They were floated by barge down the Nile when the water level was high during the spring floods, and then transferred to vessels to cross the Mediterranean Sea to the Roman port of Ostia. There, they were transferred back onto barges and pulled up the Tiber River to Rome. Then moved on rollers to the site of the Pantheon about 700 meters away…

Aaahh.. the logistics of construction is mind boggling… no wonder Rome was not built in a day!

We entered the Pantheon, it’s of course younger than the obelisk standing guard in front—just a mere 1900 odd years…the space below the huge oculus was cordoned off with ropes as it was wet from the recent rain. People were taking pics of that!

The pantheon dome commands instant respect… mighty impressive how the sheer weight 4500 tons of the dome had been so well distributed without any reinforcement!

Everything looks so harmonious—as guides say, the interior height and the diameter of the dome are the same.

The monuments to Rafael, (his fiancee) and kings including Vittoria Emanuelle look majestic.

This is the tomb of Raphael.

Behind the tomb is the statue known as the Madonna del Sasso (Madonna of the Rock) so named because she rests one foot on a boulder.

"Here lies Raphael, by whom the mother of all things (Nature) feared to be overcome while he was living, and while he was dying, herself to die"

In the Chapel of the Crucifixion, the Roman brick wall is visible in the niches.

The wooden crucifix on the altar is from the 15th century.

 Even the present day pulpit does not clash too much and it’s nice to see a working church in this ancient edifice….

However, the crowds milling around were not too respectful to the sanctity of the place. There were repeated appeals in many languages for silence… not heeded one bit… the babel of voices continued. May be they should include more languages… but hey, there is a musical SSSHHH… preceding the announcement! What part of SSSHHH… don’t people understand? J

We sat at the pew, trying to block out the chaos around… we did manage to a certain extent and emerged out of the pantheon after some 15 minutes.

We had a list of churches we wanted to visit in the neighborhood, so we hurried in the north direction to Santa Maria Maddalena, named after Saint Mary Magdalene

Nice frescoes, beautiful church. Next we hurried back to piazza della rotunda and went further to the south east.

We got to Piazza della Minerva

Santa Maria sopra Minerva

With just a cursory glance to the obelisk, we rushed into Santa Maria sopra Minerva church before it closed for the noon.

SM sopra Minerva is the only Gothic church in Rome—the arched vaulting is a bright blue with gold stars and trimmed with brilliant red ribbing.

there is a reliquary with St Catherine’s body near the altar.

The main attraction for us was Michael Angelo’s Cristo. No glass cages, no ropes and no crowds… we got real close and admired the gleam on the skin, the rippling sinews and the general cheerful demeanor of Christ. No agony portrayed to make us feel uncomfortable but just an attractive God, looking ever so welcoming!

The Carafa chapel frescoes are nice

We came out with time on our hands now to admire the piazza and the famous Bernini elephant Pulcino della Minerva serving as the supporting base for an Egyptian obelisk.

The whole structure does look short and squat and we could very well appreciate why it had been nicknamed "Porcino" ("Piggy") for a while. The name eventually changed to Pulcino, little "chick.”  We had been fascinated by the story of why the elephant is holding up its trunk in that “suggestive” way…

Pope Alexander VII on discovery of an obelisk wanted to have it displayed outside the Dominican Monastery where it was found. He initially asked Father Domenico Paglia who was also an architect for a design but rejected it and asked Bernini. Bernini came up with several designs, the one with the elephant was chosen as it symbolically represented strength and knowledge, the inscription on the pedestal reads “a strong mind is needed to support a solid knowledge”.

 Father Paglia upset with the rejection of his design insisted that the block be placed under the body of the elephant to help support the weight. Bernini was furious as he had already demonstrated that free standing objects could support large weights and tried to disguise the block with a saddle cloth. He was not happy with the resulting squashed appearance that it gave the elephant which later saw it branded Porcinco Della Minerva (the Pig of Minerva). To get his revenge Bernini placed the posterior of the elephant in front of the entrance to the Dominican monastery and flicked the sculpted tail of the elephant to one side so that Father Paglia would be greeted with that “salute” whenever he left the monastery!

Now which young man will not love this story? Son laughed his head off and took multiple pics of the cute little piggy, sorry elephant!   This obelisk is the shortest in Rome!

After having our packed lunch at this pretty square, we walked toward Termini.

Piazza della Republica:

Landed at the Naiad fountain with the statues of four nymphs in Piazza della Republica.

Lovely fountain in the midst of busy crossroads--it had created a controversy in 1901 when installed! The sculptor had used 2 sisters in the “entertainment business” as models for the naked female figures… the twin sisters were very proud that their youthful beauty had been immortalized and long after their youth was gone and beauty faded, they used to sit beside the fountain reliving past glory! The sculptor who lived in Palermo religiously came down once every year and took the sisters out to dinner, it seems! When you know the background behind things, they take on an additional dimension!

Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri 

The Basilica of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri on the piazza is just opposite to the fountain, the façade is unusual for a church as the entrance is set in the ancient Bath structure!

We went into this church where the ancient Roman baths had been incorporated into the design by its architect Michelangelo. Beautiful church… which is open through the day—no lunch breaks.

Then we tried to enter the baths nearby but the entrance was closed and we could not find a way in. We walked on…Seeing Dogali obelisk, added to our growing tally of obelisks. 

Also clicked a heart warming picture cosily ensconed in the shroud of Pope John Paul II…lovely sculpture at the termini.

Palazzo Massimo

Then we entered Palazzo Massimo. We already had the tickets we had bought at Palazzo Altemps for a discounted 5 euros.

The museum was awesome…

the courtyard had pots with fruit laden orange trees— ripe fruits fallen on the ground too.

There were lovely sculptures and relief work in 2 floors.

Then we went up to see a collection of some great mosaics. There was jewellery too, some pretty good pieces…

Intarsia of glass paste and mother of pearl is awesome.

The pièce de résistance was the frescoes from the walls of the Casa di Livia and the Villa Farnesina. So realistic that we could hear the birds chirp and smell the fragrance of the flowers!



We were so happy we had visited this museum which had practically no one around!

It was 4pm now and we decided we needed a break before our Vatican visit.

We hopped on to our faithful 105 and reached our apt. 

http://adventuretrav.blogspot.com/2016/05/rome-trip-report-day-4-vatican-museum.html
covers our Vatican visit