The Gelato Hunt: Gianicolo Walk

Beautiful days in Rome are my favorite. Here is one of them:

We met up at the Pantheon at 8:30am to start our walk for the day. We always get up early to walk, to avoid all of the tourists. Later in the day, the streets are flooded with them, and so looking at architecture becomes a chore. Here we are crowded around the most famous oculus, the Pantheon.

and again without people

Pantheon floor/wall, its huge by the way.

Morning sun coming through the Pantheon columns

Bernini's St. Ivo

We were all standing in the courtyards, admiring the church and Beatrice was telling us how maybe we can come back on our own on Sunday to go inside, when a man who worked there (or something of the sort) decided to let us all in. Very nice of him. So, this is the dome from the inside.

The interior of the church, it was really tiny, and white, and beautiful.

Then we ran into the mid-day market in Piazza Farnese

Galleria Spada, it looks like you are looking at it from a perspective, so it looks really long. In reality its about 30 feet to the end. Pretty nifty.

Can we get a gardener out here, the plants are taking over!?!

Basilica Santa Maria in Trastevere, if you look at the columns flanking the nave, you see they are all different; stolen/taken from different eras and different places to make this church.

Study break!!!

The kids playing were trying to knock us (the too-big-kids) off the jungle gym. One of the little Italian kids was going around kicking our guys in the shins. Funny stuff.

THE Tempietto, by Bramante. It is said to be the hardest building to draw. I believe it. I tried. We had to climb up a hill to get here, I was pretty worn out from the day, but it was worth it.

So, the Tempietto is usually closed, or under some kind of construction/renovation. However, on this very special day, we were allowed to go inside. Beatrice told us that she has been trying to get inside the Tempietto for 30 years, and never has been able to. We were incredibly lucky.

The statue/alter inside. The building is so small, that we could probably only fit about 10 people inside at once.

The crypt under the Tempietto

After the Tempietto, we were done walking for the day, and went and sat in a park to do our last Architecture theory discussion. Lindsey and Alex decided to trade sunglasses on the way down to the park. I think the trade benefited Lindsey more...