BOX 229: Rome and Milan.

Ancient and modern Rome come together in this photo I took when Anne and I were visiting the city in the summer of 2001. I can't say I remember taking it--it's only through Google Images that I've learned that the view is from an elevated park called the Villa Aldobrandini. It's near the domed church of Santa Maria del Loreto (1500s), and off to the left in the distance I believe that's the statue of St Peter (also 1500s) standing atop the ancient Trajan's Column. One thing that strikes me now, looking at the photo, besides the dramatic figure in the foreground and the sign on the right, is the penthouse garden atop the apartment building--quite a place to spend a summer!

But it's hard to point a camera anywhere in Rome without taking in something fascinating. This was my fifth visit (previous ones in 1969, 1972, 1973 and 1983), and Anne's first. Looking over these latest scanned slides, I see that most of them show the most familiar tourist hangouts--though they're no less astounding for being familiar. Case in point: the Trevi Fountain:

I see that I couldn't resist taking yet another photo of the Victor Emmanuel II monument, as I had on most other visits; I kind of like this one because of the distortion from the motorcycle's windshield:

But otherwise, most of my photos of Rome monuments on this trip were taken not head-on but from narrow streets leading up to them: for example, the Spanish Steps:

This wasn't conscious planning--I've only noticed it as I've looked over my scanned slides. Another example is the Castel St Angelo:

And the Pantheon:

Here I did try to capture the interior as well; my camera was a little more successful than it was in 1972:

The Colosseum too I shot from a street perspective:

But better perhaps are a couple of more Colosseum photos from a nearby garden:

Unlike most of my posts, this one has been showing the slides completely out of order--and I'll continue with a miscellany of other Rome sights. Next, you see a view of St Peter's from a famous perspective, the edge of the Borghese Gardens above the Piazza del Popolo:

From here we walked into the Gardens and on to the Villa Borghese itself with its great Bernini sculptures;

At some other point we stopped at another museum with an imposing facade, the Palazzo Spada:

Among the churches we visited were St John Lateran, with the lovely columns of its cloister:

. . . and the fanciful spire of St Ivo:

This next building is a 1600s governmental palace, the Palazzo Montecitorio, now housing the Chamber of Deputies, the facade mostly by Bernini:

One afternoon we strolled through Trastevere: here are two views from the Via San Francesco di Salas, with the Villa Lante in the distance:

Also in Trastevere we stopped at a cafe for fresh-squeezed orange juice:

We walked along the Tiber:

Looking down and again from across the river, we saw some sort of photo shoot in progress:

And here's another cafe shot but this time from a distance, with Anne sitting at one of the tables. I'm not sure why I took this shot, unless we had had an especially good lunch:

And here's a shot where obviously the location can't be identified--nor do I have any idea who took the photo:

I see that we walked past the columns of the Temple of Venus Genetrix in the Julius Caesar Forum:

And we looked down on the Roman Forum:

On a later occasion we walked through the Forum, including past the Arch of Constantine:

From Rome we took a train to Milan for the last couple of days of our 2001 Italian trip. In Milan we met up once again with Jim and Jean. I have great memories of a dinner we had at the same restaurant near the Cathedral that Max and I had gone to in 1984, and of a performance of the ballet Giselle at La Scala, but no pics of us together. In fact, I have only a few photos of Milan itself, starting with the central Piazza Cordusio:

From there it's a short walk to the astonishing Cathedral:

And to the side of it, the Galleria:

(As usual in Milan I felt less than well dressed.)

One thing we didn't want to miss was walking of the roof of the great Gothic Cathedral, as Max and I had done in '84. My last photos of Milan, and of the whole 2001 Italian trip, are of Anne on staircases as we climbed up to the roof area:

My next box of slides, taken when we got back to WI, features our new grandson, Forest, born while we were in Tuscany, but I'll save those pics for the next post.