Mike and Luke, the seminarians we met last Sunday, were giving the tour, along with another one of their classmates, Bryan. Seven other people from school showed up as well, so that was cool.
It was a beautiful morning, and there was really no line at all to get into the church. Before getting in line, Mike gave us some backstory (which I contributed to...I just did a presentation on the history and architecture of the church, remember?), and we took some pictures that for once weren't littered with a million tourists in the background. Finally, we made our way inside St. Peter's Basilica.
The church was just as incredible as I remembered. There's just so much going on in there! Mosaics, papal tombs (three of which show you the incorruptible bodies), huge bronze fixtures created with bronze stolen from the Pantheon, Michelangelo's Pietà, and so on. I didn't take too many pictures, first because I took so many last time I went, and second because I had limited space on my phone (I finally deleted a bunch of old pictures later in the day, though).
After the wonderful tour, which, really, was even more fulfilling this time after learning so much about everything in my City of Rome class, the seminarians treated us to breakfast (using the Campus Ministry budget). I had hot chocolate and some sort of pastry thing. Luke and Bryan shared their stories with us, which were really fascinating to hear. Bryan's especially was interesting: for years he didn't go to church or anything, and worked in Ford's corporate offices, and then now he's a seminarian in Rome. Crazy!
Katie needed to get Christmas ornaments representing Italy and the Vatican City for her mom, so we did a little souvenir shopping. I ended up getting two magnets as well...I just couldn't resist!
We got back to campus around noon, and we were quite tired. After resting for a little while, we went to Good to get some lunch. Since the weather was still super wonderful, we decided we'd walk all the way down to the Basilica San Clemente, which is a little ways past the Colosseum.
The Basilica San Clemente is a small, beautiful church, but underneath it is an old, medieval church, and underneath THAT is an ancient pagan temple (which I think was turned into a church). It's probably not something someone who gets claustrophobic should do, but I thought it was really incredible. Pictures weren't allowed, but it was so dark anyway it wouldn't have mattered.
We realized that we were actually no more than 10 minutes away from St. John in the Lateran, which is actually the main church of Catholicism, so we went there, too. Can you believe it? We inside St. Peter's AND St. John in the Lateran in the same day. So Catholic!
I have to be honest, I definitely prefer the interior of St. John in the Lateran to St. Peter's. I guess it was just more my taste. What was interesting was that the floor of St. John in the Lateran was almost exactly the same as the floor of the Basilica San Clemente: a really fancy-looking geometric pattern, featuring lots of red porphyry. (Apparently only royalty used to be seen as fit to walk on red porphyry. Between those three churches today, though, Katie and I walked on SO MUCH of it that we surely must be queens or something!)
Spotted: the Illuminati symbol?! (Up at the top)
Yay Constantine
Our walk back to campus was kind of a haul, but still pleasant enough, Gotta get in that exercise.
Super cool tiny piece of rainbow we saw!
We chilled for a while, and then headed to dinner at Raf, one of our new favorite places. Let me tell you, it was POPPING. So many people there! I guess it was Saturday, but still! I guess everyone else knows it's amazing, too. I went with a simple Margherita pizza this time (delicious) with a Peroni (refreshing--channeling my inner Mom and Dad) followed by a dessert moscato (so yummy). We were there almost two hours because they just did not want to get rid of us, despite the fact that a bunch of people were waiting for tables, but it was fun. They had free Wi-Fi, so we kept ourselves entertained with Twitter.
I'm sad that this was our last Saturday in Rome, but I'm glad that it was at least a great one.
No comments:
Post a Comment