Rome, The Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica

“From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.”                                                          Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo like time travellers we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time for the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and is a place where some of the most important decisions in the history of Europe and the World have been made over the centuries.  (A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves).

The route took us past the Castel Sant’ Angelo, which was the Pope’s ‘safe house’ in times of danger and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people seemed to snake forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it shuffled quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the world that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting and even Micky overcame his usual reluctance to visit the inside of a religious building and joined us.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the atmosphere as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artefacts.

 

Outside we saw the Swiss Guards in their striking medieval uniforms of blue, red and yellow and the Vatican post office doing a brisk trade in post marking letters and postcards.

The Vatican is the third smallest state in Europe after Monaco and San Marino and its status is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Church and State, who had been squabbling since Italian unification, finally thrashed out a compromise deal that was marked by the building of a new road the Via della Conciliazione which, I have to say, to me seems rather sterile and lacking any real character.  It is expensive however and from a street side stall we bought the dearest water I have ever had at €4 for a small bottle.  We weren’t going to fall for that again so later on Kim refilled it from a public fountain by the side of the road.

The Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II took us back over the River Tiber and not unsurprisingly onto the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II which leads inevitably to the Vittorio Emanuele monument at the other end.  As it stretched out in front of us there was about a kilometre and a half to walk and all of a sudden my itinerary looked for the first time to be overly ambitious.  We had seen everything that we had planned to see but now there was a long walk back to the train station and everyone was hot and tired.

 

This long road is flanked with Palaces and Churches and Piazzas but our feet and legs were leached by the effort and aching and it was desperately hot so all we wanted was a bar and a cold drink even if it did cost another eye-watering €25 for five drinks.  We found a place about half way along the road and stopped for half an hour to rest and recover in the comfort of an air-conditioned bar and yes, sure enough it cost us €25.

Rome the Eternal City

In July 2003 I visited Rome with my son Jonathan, taking advantage of some of the earliest Ryanair 1p flights.  Rome Campino airport is quite a way out of the city so we took a coach to the main train station and then a metro train to the station Colosseo.

The exit to the station is close to the site of the ancient city and as we emerged blinking into the sunlight I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  Although this was my second visit to Rome (the first was in 1976) the sight of the amphitheatre felt just as exciting and dramatic as the first time.  It had been hot underground and I had had a sweating problem so the first thing to do was to have a cold beer and a change of shirt at an adjacent bar on the Piazza del Colosseo before walking the short distance to our hotel, The Romano on Largo Corrado Ricci, which was conveniently close to the Forum.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking.

And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original.

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago, on my first visit,  people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona and it was all becoming a bit overwhelming.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.  We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  After joining the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.

After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope John Paul II today, most likely because at eighty-four years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the hotel.

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Other posts about Ancient Rome:

Spartacus the Gladiator

Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

Istria 2011 the Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Grand Tour of Europe

The Aqueduct of Segovia

Segóbriga

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Rome in a Day

It was about a two hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Rome which took just over three hours and with a full day to pack in the coach picked us up before breakfast so we collected food parcels and set of for the Italian capital, which is the third most visited European city after London and Paris.  The coach took the road towards Naples and then swung around the base of Vesuvius and picked up the A1 Autostrada that runs all the way from Naples to Rome and then on to Milan.

The coach dropped us off near the site of the ancient city and I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  I had studied history for the last six years but this was the first time that I had visited any of the exciting places that I had delighted in reading about.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking.  And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and joined an official city guide who took us through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder on 15^th March 54BC and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument, erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy, we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original.

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome so we did this and it must work because I went back in 2003 and then again in 2004.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael and after that it was the Baroque Piazza Navona.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.

We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.  After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope Paul VI today, most likely because at seventy-nine years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the coach.  Before leaving the city the driver did a whistle stop drive around some of the sights that we had missed earlier in the day including the window where the dictator Mussolini used to make his animated speeches from.

A Year in a Life – 18th November, Rome, The Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica

“From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome… He can see a panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious in history than any other in Europe.”                                                         Mark Twain – The Innocents Abroad

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Sant’ Angelo like time travellers we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time for the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church and is a place where some of the most important decisions in the history of Europe and the World have been made over the centuries.  (A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves).

The route took us past the Castel Sant’ Angelo, which was the Pope’s ‘safe house’ in times of danger and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people seemed to snake forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it shuffled quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the world that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting and even Micky overcame his usual reluctance to visit the inside of a religious building and joined us.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the atmosphere as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artefacts.

Outside we saw the Swiss Guards in their striking medieval uniforms of blue, red and yellow and the Vatican post office doing a brisk trade in post marking letters and postcards.

The Vatican is the third smallest state in Europe after Monaco and San Marino and its status is guaranteed by the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Church and State, who had been squabbling since Italian unification, finally thrashed out a compromise deal that was marked by the building of a new road the Via della Conciliazione which, I have to say, to me seems rather sterile and lacking any real character.  It is expensive however and from a street side stall we bought the dearest water I have ever had at €4 for a small bottle.  We weren’t going to fall for that again so later on Kim refilled it from a public fountain by the side of the road.

The Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II took us back over the River Tiber and not unsurprisingly onto the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II which leads inevitably to the Vittorio Emanuele monument at the other end.  As it stretched out in front of us there was about a kilometre and a half to walk and all of a sudden my itinerary looked for the first time to be overly ambitious.  We had seen everything that we had planned to see but now there was a long walk back to the train station and everyone was hot and tired.

This long road is flanked with Palaces and Churches and Piazzas but our feet and legs were leached by the effort and aching and it was desperately hot so all we wanted was a bar and a cold drink even if it did cost another eye-watering €25 for five drinks.  We found a place about half way along the road and stopped for half an hour to rest and recover in the comfort of an air-conditioned bar and yes, sure enough it cost us €25.

A Life in a Year – 3rd July, Rome the Eternal City

In July 2003 I visited Rome with Jonathan, taking advantage of some of the earliest Ryanair 1p flights.  Rome Campino airport is quite a way out of the city so we took a coach to the main train station and then a metro train to the station Colosseo.

The exit to the station is close to the site of the ancient city and as we emerged blinking into the sunlight I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  Although this was my second visit to Rome (the first was in 1976) the sight of the amphitheatre felt just as exciting and dramatic as the first time.  It had been hot underground and I had had a sweating problem so the first thing to do was to have a cold beer and a change of shirt at an adjacent bar on the Piazza del Colosseo before walking the short distance to our hotel, The Romano on Largo Corrado Ricci, which was conveniently close to the Forum.

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking. 

And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

 In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original. 

 

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago, on my first visit,  people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael.  Next it was the Baroque Piazza Navona and it was all becoming a bit overwhelming.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves.  We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  After joining the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.

 After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope John Paul II today, most likely because at eighty-four years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the hotel. 

Spartacus the Gladiator

Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

Istria 2011 the Roman Amphitheatre at Pula

The Grand Tour of Europe

The Aqueduct of Segovia

Segóbriga

A Life in a Year – 23rd March, A Visit to Florence and the Ponte Vecchio

In 2006 I visited Tuscany in Italy and on 23^rd March visited the city of Florence and crossed its famous bridge.

The Ponte Vecchio that crosses the river Arno in Florence is the oldest bridge in Tuscany and by happy chance the only bridge in the city that, allegedly due to a direct order from Adolph Hitler himself, wasn’t blown up by the retreating armies as they cleared out from Florence in their withdrawal from Italy during the Second-World-War.  Knowing how the Nazis used to like to blow things up that must have been a one-in-a-million fluke! 

The first bridge on this site was built back by the Romans and was constructed of wood on piers of stone.  It was ruined in 1117 and later reconstructed but destroyed again in 1333 by flooding and rebuilt once more in 1345, but this time more sensibly in stone.  Due to the high volume of traffic using the bridge, a number of shopkeepers set up shop to catch the passing trade. The first merchants here consisted primarily of blacksmiths, butchers, and tanners catering mostly to travelling soldiers but when the Medici family moved into Florence bringing with them vast wealth and an appreciation for the finer things in life they promptly cleared the bridge of all the dirty trades that were probably a bit of an eyesore anyway and certainly responsible for polluting the river below. 

They replaced them with goldsmiths and more similar upmarket shops and today it remains lined with medieval workshops on both sides and some of them precariously overhanging the river below supported only by slender timber brackets.  A number of these shops had to be replaced in 1966 when there was a major flood that consumed the city destroyed some of them but this time was unable to destroy the bridge itself.  The flood story is an interesting one and a good account can be found at

www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/c-d/cities06.html

Running along the top of the bridge is a corridor that the Medici had built so that they could cross the river without having to mix with the riff-raff below and is now an art gallery.  When I visited the bridge it was busy with street traders and shoppers and the ever-present scrounging beggars of course.  Along the bridge there were many padlocks locked to the railings and especially in the middle around the statue of the Florentine sculptor, Cellini.

This, I found out later, is a lover’s tradition where by locking the padlock and throwing the key into the river they become eternally bonded.  This is an action where I would recommend extreme caution because it sounds dangerously impulsive to me; I think I would further recommend taking the precaution of keeping a spare somewhere in case I needed it later.  Apparently all of these love tokens do lots of damage to the bridge and thousands of padlocks need to be removed every year.  To deter people there is a €50 penalty for those caught doing it and that is a much higher price than I would be prepared to pay for eternal bondage!

Actually, it may be that there is some truth in this tale because according to ‘Eurostat’ even though the divorce rate has doubled in the last five years Italy has one of the lowest rates in the European Union.  Sweden has the highest and although I don’t know this for a fact I’m willing to bet that across all of Europe the Vatican State probably has the absolute lowest!

A Life in a Year- 15th March, The Ides of March and a visit to Rome

It was about a two hundred and fifty kilometre drive to Rome which took just over three hours and with a full day to pack in the coach picked us up before breakfast so we collected food parcels and set of for the Italian capital, which is the third most visited European city after London and Paris.  The coach took the road towards Naples and then swung around the base of Vesuvius and picked up the A1 Autostrada that runs all the way from Naples to Rome and then on to Milan.

The coach dropped us off near the site of the ancient city and I was immediately overawed by my first sight of the Colosseum.  I had studied history for the last six years but this was the first time that I had visited any of the exciting places that I had delighted in reading about. 

Our first stop in Rome was the Colosseum itself which, two thousand years before, had been the largest amphitheatre ever built in the Roman Empire and was capable of seating sixty-thousand spectators at gladiatorial combat events.  I was stunned by the size and magnificence of the place and even though there are substantial parts of it now missing I found the scale of the place simply breathtaking.  And because there were so many things to see so was the pace of our sightseeing and after the Colosseum we passed by the Augustus Arch and joined an official city guide who took us through the south entrance and into the old Roman Forum and walked on old Roman roads past the spot of Julius Ceaser’s murder on 15^th March 54BC and the sites of the Senate and other civic buildings.  To the west was the Palace of Augustus and over the Via Dei Fori Imperialli to the east was Trajan’s Market and his personal column in his memory and after an hour or so we left the Forum by the north entrance after passing through the Arch of Constantine.

 

In just a little over sixty minutes we had covered about a thousand years of history and as we passed by the Victor Emmanuelle National Monument erected to commemorate the nineteenth century unification of Italy we walked along Via Del Corso and into the areas that were predominantly Renaissance and Baroque in architectural character.  Rome was of the few major European cities that escaped World-War-Two relatively unscathed and so most of the buildings and monuments are completely original. 

We visited the Spanish Steps and saw the house where John Keats died and then the famous Trevi Fountain where thirty years ago people were still allowed to sit on the monument and cool their feet off in the water but that has been stopped now.  There is a tradition of throwing three coins in the fountain guarantees that you will return one day to Rome so we did this and it must work because I went back in 2003 and then again in 2004.  These days’ tourists with a desire to return to the Eternal City deposit an average of €3,000 a day in the fountain and this is collected up every night and is used to fund social projects for the poor of the city.  That’s probably why people aren’t allowed to paddle in it anymore!

We visited the Pantheon, which is one of the best preserved ancient Roman buildings, originally built as a pagan temple but later converted into a Christian Church and is the burial place of the ex kings of Italy and other important Italians like the artist Raphael and after that it was the Baroque Piazza Navona.  I liked all of these sights but I was intrigued by something much more mundane.  All of the manhole covers displayed the Roman symbol SPQR which, I learned later, is the motto of the city and appears in the city’s coat of arms, as well as on many of the civic buildings.  SPQR comes from the Latin phrase, Senātus Populusque Rōmānus (The Senate and the People of Rome), referring to the government of the ancient Republic. It appeared on coins, at the end of public documents, in dedications of monuments and public works, and was the symbol on the standards of the Roman legions.

By mid afternoon when we crossed the River Tiber over the Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II we had completed the ancient, the medieval, and the modern and now it was time to do the religious.  Rome is the most important holy city in Christendom and St Peter’s Basilica at the heart of the Vatican City is the headquarters of the Catholic Church.  A Basilica by the way is a sort of double Cathedral because it has two naves. 

We walked past the Castel Sant’Angelo and into the busy square outside the Basilica where a long queue of people snaked forever around the perimeter waiting for their turn to go inside.  We joined the back of it and were pleased to find that it moved quite quickly towards the main doors and soon we were inside the biggest and the tallest church in the World that has room for sixty-thousand worshippers at one sitting.  It was busy inside but not uncomfortable and we soaked up the information from the guide’s commentary as we passed by chapels with precious holy relics, the tombs of dead Popes and rooms with glass cases full of religious artifacts.  After the tour was finished we paid for an optional extra and took the stairs to the top of the dome which involved an awful lot of stairs and a tight squeeze at the very top but we were rewarded with fantastic views across the city all the way back to the Colosseum.

After a final look around the outside of the Basilica we concluded that we were unlikely to see Pope Paul VI today, most likely because at seventy-nine years old he probably liked a lie down in the afternoon, so we left St Peter’s to return to the coach.  Before leaving the city the driver did a whistle stop drive around some of the sights that we had missed earlier in the day including the window where the dictator Mussolini used to make his animated speeches from.