BOX 233: Rome and Siena.

That's Rome's Castel Sant'Angelo, built to be an imperial tomb, later a papal fortress and residence, a prison, and now a museum. A statue-adorned bridge across the River Tiber stretches over to it. And in front, in sunglasses, is Anne, with her Aunt Roberta to her right and mother, Judy, to her left. We were on a whirlwind walk through a stretch of Rome, on an afternoon excursion during our January 2002 stay in Siena.

We must have taken an 8 am bus from Siena, arriving in Rome by 10:30, because our immediate goal was to attend an 11 am mass at St Peter's. (I'm calculating from a photo I took of the basilica's clock after the mass, showing the time as 12:15.) A fast taxi from the bus station got us to the Bernini-designed piazza in front of the basilica, where our first sight was of a very tall Christmas tree near the yet-taller Egyptian obelisk in the center of the round "square." A Nativity scene with life-size figures was beneath it:

Here's a view of the piazza as we came back out from the doors of St Peter's:

Judy was raised Roman Catholic, and it was a tremendous experience for her to attend a service there of all places--pretty awesome for the rest of us as well. As usual, I couldn't get a good interior shot, though I'll share with you what I did get, with the winter light streaming through part of the church. Although the pope didn't preside over the mass, he did make an appearance that afternoon to address the crowd on the piazza from a window high up in the papal apartments. I don't have a photo of him, but you can see the window with the cloth hanging below it where he was to appear..

It was at this time that I took the photo of the clock I mentioned:

For the rest of the afternoon we did quite a lot of walking, joined by a pair of students, Jason and Nikki, who had been on our first campus trip to Canterbury. After our stop at the Castel Sant'Angelo we went on to the Piazza Navona, where I took one photo, of one of the river gods in the Fountain of the Four Rivers (more Bernini!), with the dome of Sant'Andrea della Valle in the background.

I'm sure we stopped at the Pantheon, but my next photo is from the Torre Argentina, where Anne and I had spent a good deal of time the previous summer observing the hundreds of cats that occupy it. Though an important Roman ruin, now sunk below street level, it is also a cat sanctuary and hospital. Here's Aunt Roberta checking out one of the denizens:

Next, stop, the Campidoglio:

From there we made our way to the Colosseum, from which we had these views of the Arch of Constantine, with the Arch of Titus in the distance across the Roman Forum:

It was funny to see some "gladiators" in costume, available to pose with tourists. They certainly had "Roman" faces.

Nikki and Jason posed beside the Colosseum:

I'll include another photo of the pair with Judy added--it's out of focus, but I like the memory of the scene. As you can see, it was getting dark by the time we were at the Colosseum. By the time we got to the Trevi Fountain it was dark--still worth seeing, since it was floodlighted. Here are the photos we took by flash:

From there, or soon after, we took a taxi back to the bus station for our return to Siena. I have no idea how we managed to have time for lunch or dinner that day--maybe we bought sandwiches to eat on the bus.

Back in Siena the next day we took a few photos from our hotel terrace. It looks like it was a warmer day:

That evening there was a very beautiful sunset over Siena:

On Tuesday our full group of 80 took another organized tour, this time to Pisa and some hill towns. I could squeeze the photos of those visits and our final days in Siena into this post, but I think I'll save them for next time.