Click on images below to enlarge:
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| Another view of Rome's skyline. In addition to the skyline, this photo
presents a good sense of life at the street level.
| I like this trompe l'oeil hallway, even though none of what you see here
(framed paintings, reliefs, columns) are real.
Also, tempera paintings on the walls of his hallway show the museum as
it was being built.
| These rooms are absurd: packed with statues, paintings on the ceiling,
and marble patterns on the floor.
| A picture showing the elaborate decorations and paintings on the
ceiling.
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| Another example of a hallway artistically designed and filled from floor
to ceiling.
| Wow! Look at the maps gallery's ceiling.
I took this picture as
high resolution to revel in the details.
| Maps are directly frescoed onto the walls. They're enormous.
| The maps are very detailed. View the full-sized image to see all the
small towns they've included.
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| There's also artistic details (e.g., mythical scene, compass rose) in
addition to the geographical details (see the tiny dots for towns and
bays).
| Another high-resolution picture of the map gallery's ceiling.
Excellent for its novelty and density.
| The huge frescoes in the Room of Immaculate Conception.
| The Vatican car park.
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A fresco in the Raphael room: Hall of Constantine.
Artificially brightened.
| The School of Athens fresco in the Raphael's Room of Segnatura.
This fresco supposedly includes multiple intellectual heavyweights
(Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, etc.), but I can't recognize
anyone.
| Books so the Vatican can speak to all of god's children.
| A series of countless long hallways receding into the distance, all
overdone, and all with paintings above the door frames. To appreciate
them and to get a better sense of what it was like to walk down this
stretch, look at the middle of the full-sized image.
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A sketch of Saint Peter's Basilica, which I'd be visiting later this
day.
Artificially brightened.
| The Vatican's double-helix stairway. I wonder if they realized at the
time its significance (connection to biology, evolution).
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Sorry, photographs were not allowed in the Sistine Chapel.
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| Lunch at Ristorante Pizzeria Porta Castello
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| We decided to have lunch here, at Ristorante Pizzeria Porta Castello.
| Inside.
| Fiori di zucca (accurately translated as zucchini flower, but the
menu translated as pumpkin flower), stuffed with cheese and deep-fried.
Good. Reminded Di Yin of pakora (fried Indian vegetables).
| Roman-style artichoke. Definitely good. Better than the usual
American/French way of steaming artichokes and then dipping the leaves
in a cream sauce.
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"Tonnarelli in sachi di cinghiale (fresh pasta with boar)." Good. The
noodles have a nice spring to them. The boar tasted like a minor twist
on beef. I approve.
Incidentally, Di Yin thinks red meats in Europe in general taste game-y
(even bloody), probably related to how meats are aged. (She thinks
they're aged less than in the states.) I don't taste this.
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Di Yin's carbonara was different from the one I had the previous day.
Her was more eggy, less bacony. She liked it. I preferred mine from
the previous day.
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| Saint Peter's and Vicinity
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| There are long Roman walls through this part of the city. This is an
arbitrary example of one we crossed.
| My first glimpse of Saint Peter's Basilica, heavily foreshortened.
(The column is at the center of the piazza, quite a bit in front of
the basilica--nowhere near as close to the basilica as it appears.)
| Ditto, just with a shorter exposure.
| Di Yin and I in front of Saint Peter's Basilica. Excellent.
(No one else notices the one thing that bothers me about the picture.)
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| A panorama of Piazza San Pietro (Saint Peter's Square). Note its sheer
scale, and also the numerous statues above the deep, colonnaded walkways
surrounding the square.
| A close-up of the colonnaded walkway, four tall, solid columns wide.
| A sample of the large numbers of saints surrounding the Piazza San
Pietro (Saint Peter's Square).
| Atop the basilica, Christ and the leaders of his army.
Also note the
particularly nice Corinthian columns.
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An elaborate statue surrounding a clock atop one corner of the basilica.
Artificially brightened.
| Looking down Saint Peter's portico.
| A Vatican guard. Perhaps excellent for its colors.
| A panoramic movie of the inside of Saint Peter's Basilica, near the
entrance. This movie looks down the nave in the middle and, at the end,
looks up to the statues above the arches and the ceiling. Note
especially the basilica's immense space.
By the way, the clanging
you hear is because of some construction/repair work being done.
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