28.7 More at San Vincenzo

I spent the morning at the excavations of the old Abbey. The 12th c church up the hill from the 7th c monastic house still had a lot of its frescoes intact, including an entire section of crypt that wasn't complete enough to be worth covering up. (The 9th c crypt has most of its walls intact, and so has been locked up to keep it looking good.) It was still astoundingly hot, so I didn't stay long, but did crawl over the frescoes and take lots of pictures. (Oh the love we have for the digital camera! Want to take 400 pictures in a day? Do it! No guilt! No paying for "hmm, well, THAT didn't come out as well as I'd hoped" failures! Love the new camera especially for its ability to take nearly flash-quality pictures with no flash.) A better overview of the whole thing, for those willing to slog through the Italian, is here: http://xoomer.virgilio.it/davmonac/sanvin/index.html

After lunch a friend of Mother Agnes took us to the station, where we realized we had left all the refrigerated medicine... in the refrigerator. We panicked, but Mother Agnes, being telephoned, told us not to worry and that she would find a way to get it to us.

29.7 Pantheon

We walked most of the way down, finding a grocery store for more juice boxes and a toy store which has inspired us. Smurf chess sets! Playmobil ninjas! SPQR Risk! (Which we will own once we get to Parma and don't need to tote it around in luggage.) Finally gave up and got a cab the rest of the way down.

Such an amazing building. The girls weren't all that interested in my explanations of the various bits, but they did like the mosaic floors and the intense marble work. Gelato, of course, is required in this neighborhood -- I was told Della Palma was da bomb, and it was delicious, but I may try to get to Monteforte before we leave, as my memories of that place are just magnificent. From there we went and tossed our coins into the Trevi, then a cab home -- too hot and too tired to walk any further.

30.7 Palatine Hill, Forum and Colosseum

These come as one ticket and I have learned to acquire said ticket at the back of the Palatine Hill. After all, we’ve ALL heard of the Colosseum, let’s go stand in line THERE! With a ticket purchased in a line composed of the couple in front of us and us, we cruise right in. But the Palatine is pretty cool. I took a picture of my foot on a bit of floor from the Domus Augustana – that’s right, I walked where Auggie himself walked! Woot! (Yeah, I call him Auggie ‘cuz we’re tight like that, Auggie and me.) More pictures of bits of in situ flooring, and a few of the Villa Farnesina frescoes from the xx century. I had forgotten how much of the Palatine had been covered up with Renaissance-era palazzos; on the one hand, seems a shame to pull them down to get to the ancient stuff, but hey, the ancient stuff! So it’s a puzzle. A lot more excavation work has been done, which means a lot is covered with ugly orange mesh fence and scaffolding. The Circus Maximus is completely closed off because of some sort of emergency restoration. Since most of the Circus is grass, I’m wondering what needs emergency work, but I couldn’t get close enough to the signs to see.

Down in the Forum, the changes since I was here 9 years ago are considerable. The Curia has been converted into an exhbition space, about which I am ambivalent. (I’m ambivalent about a lot in the next few days, be warned.) It’s a big empty space – cool floor mosaics (I am discovering in myself a fascination with floor design) but not much else going on – and thus great for showing off some of the bits and pieces discovered in the ongoing excavations. But it’s hard to get a sense of The Senate Met Here when there are exhibits everywhere.

Meanwhile in front of the Curia are new excavations – are these of the so-called Palace of Romulus of which I’ve heard? It was definitely some kind of mosaic-y looking floor and all covered with greenish glass to keep out the sunlight. No posting of any kind of what it was, and it blocked access to the Arch of Septimius Severus and the Tablinarium, pooh. But Rosie was getting tired so Elise and I cut short our admiration of the Comitium and headed back up to the Colosseum.

A lot of work has been done here too. There was an exhibit on the process of cleaning the dear old thing, and I got a great pic of several cleaned next to several uncleaned supports on the second floor – EWWW. Welcome to 1900 years of city living, smog and soot. It’s a slow process (no one wants to powerwash stone that potentially porous, after all!) but the results look great. It was too long a day for Rose in the end, though, so we had to come back and go to bed.