Rome is a big city that’s a lot like other modern cities except it has great historic rubble scattered throughout it. Everywhere you go you bump into some two thousand year old wall or temple. We had the misfortune to arrive the weekend of Teresa’s beatification so Rome was packed with the world’s faithful. The hostels were filled with True Believers, mostly Americans. We ran around and saw sights and tried to avoid crowds.

The Vatican City is a very strange place. All throughout Europe we went to the remains of castles and saw the relics of the monarchies. The Catholic Church is the last surviving medieval institution and the Vatican City is a fully functional, meticulously groomed, real deal palace. The amount of money the church has is on full display. The guards carry pikes and wear these ridiculous clown outfits. Everyone’s in clerical costume. Its a 24×7 ren faire.

Saint Peter’s Basilica is a gigantic and ostentatiously decorated building, that tries for conversion by awe. Michelangelo and others did a fine job with the plentiful and enormous statuary. There are mosaics inside made with such small tiles and fine gradations of color that you cannot tell they aren’t paintings without getting within inches. And its free!

To see the Sistine Chapel you are forced to wind through the Vatican Museum. This is good, because the museum is one of the best in Europe. The ancient Jordan river area stuff is of high quality and there are giant tapestries so detailed the method of making them has been forever lost. What takes the cake is the map room. A half kilometer long vaulted hall of beautifully painted, 15 foot high maps of Europe and Italy. As you walk down the corridor you easily imagine yourself as royalty talking to ministers and generals about what to build where and who to obliterate when.

At the Colleseum its easy to imagine the jeering crowd and pompous senators. The maze of mechanisms and cages beneath the arena is exposed and very sophisticated. We also went to see what remains of the Forum and Senators’ estates. There’s tons of good history in all those places, and it all smells like the ubiquitous mint plants. On top of one hill, Nero built himself a nymphaeum bigger than a football feild. Mandy and I immediately wondered why we haven’t done the same thing.

After seeing the sights, Roma kind of bored us as very generic modern city, I’m sure its a fine place to live and get to know. So we took the long train ride south…