Today we are off until Italian class, so a friend and I decided to try to make it to a bunch of the major sights in Rome that we haven’t gotten to yet. Our first stop was the Colosseum (its embarrassing that it took us this long), but our walk was quite eventful on its own. We were approached by one of the many people dressed up as Roman soldiers/gladiators, and were basically forced to take pictures with him. It was quite awkward taking them (but cool because I have always joked about doing that), and after we were done, the time for confrontation was nigh: he asked us for five euro for the pictures, we told him that we didn’t have it (didn’t want to pay for it), and after some tension and most likely rude remarks from him, we escaped with our photos and our money! Finally we made it to the Colosseum, but our success stopped there.As it turns out, the tickets to get in for normal people are twelve euro! We tried to get the discount for students, but it only applies to those from the EU. So we decided to try and come back another day and swindle our way in. It was not a complete waste, however, since we got to walk around the outside and enjoy the great moments there. I think that the way that the building acts as a cap for the massive and busy street leading up to it (traffic is diverted around it, causing awkward situations with the other incoming traffic) as well as the Imperial Fora running parallel to the road is pretty great, especially the fact that this condition is still intact and recognizable. I also enjoy the moment on either side where the two walls overlap, especially the abrasive slant that the edge takes. After a quick sketch and a walk around to enjoy the massive scale we set off for our next stop on the list.
We took the subway out to Piazza Republica, which was a pretty great half-circle space with a nice fountain, before walking to Santa Maria della Vittoria. This church is quite fantastic in its own right, but it is also home to one of the most famous statues in Rome: The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. After crossing over from the seemingly bland and very hidden (by construction) façade, we entered a highly articulated, sparsely lit, and extremely intimate space. Every inch of the interior was ornamented in some way; whether it was beautiful paintings, gold work, or fantastic white sculptures of angels, the feeling was sublime and bordered on chaotic. The light coming from the clerestory windows kept the space from being creepy while lighting up the seemingly free-flying angels to highlight them. The altar was pretty great as well and featured a sunray design behind the cross that also appeared to be lit up by the incoming sunlight. The dome was pretty nice, and its relation to the four sections of the roof adjoined to it was very interesting.
After marveling at this space we moved on to the main attraction: The Ecstasy of St. Theresa. A Bernini masterpiece, the work is crafted with such delicate care and mastery that the raw emotion is quite palpable, and the light pouring in from above casts fantastic shadows around. Aside from this statue and a much less interesting one of a similar style across the transept, there were also two reliefs featuring fantastic forced perspective, also by Bernini. After enjoying this church for a while, we set off for a much less famous and much less important one: Basilica del Sacro Cuore Immacolato di Maria (Church of the Sacred Heart of the Immaculate Mary). This was the giant church that we saw on our way to see Renzo’s Auditorium, and I have been trying to get out to see it ever since. After taking the subway and a train we were back to that fantastic façade that has been in my dreams for weeks. Now that we actually had some time to examine it, I found the dense overlap and conflicting angles of the various levels in the roof and front façade quite intriguing. The scale of this beast was still impressive, and we soon learned that it is actually the fifth biggest in all of Rome besides the four Great Basilicas. 
Once inside, however, my steadfast affinity for this church began to wane. The interior is fantastic in terms of its grand scale and beautiful light, but the stark blankness of the space combined with the artwork so awful it was almost embarrassing gave the impression that this was a joke. I had a hard time forming a definitive opinion on this space, and the jury remains out. I did thoroughly enjoy the open and airy nature of the main space, and although the dome was bland beyond belief (we learned later that some of it is unfinished, though I cant see how much could be done to help), I really loved the softness of the expectedly dominating concrete mass. We walked around this large and oddly shaped space checking out the humongous side chapels and the extra large niches along the outer walls. After sitting for a bit to try to comprehend this mess I found out the one thing this church does well: carry sound. I accidentally kicked the end of the bench and it sounded like an avalanche carrying dynamite down a hill (we skedaddled before we found out if I disturbed the mass going on in one of the chapels). After we left we walked around as much of the outside as we could (not a lot) before catching the bus back to the Pantheon to find Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza.
We had stopped at this church earlier in the trip and couldn’t get in, and it wasn’t until we arrived that we remembered why: it is only open for three hours a week, on Sunday. So we enjoyed snapping some pictures of the courtyard and fantastic bell tower without the horrendous glare we faced last time before heading out. On our way home we decided to make up for this failure by stopping at the Monument to Victor Emmanuel II, or the “Wedding Cake” as I have called it numerous times. The entry to the building is up a gigantic set of stairs that provide pretty great views of the surrounding area and an extremely grandiose procession up. The main stairs end in a pretty great terrace with a monument to something that is guarded by very intimidating soldiers and marked by a flame.
This space would be much more enjoyable were it not for the horrible sensation of being baked on a giant marble slab under the unforgiving Italian sun, so we scurried up towards shade. From here we took a second set of steps up perpendicular to these before arriving at the entrance to the building. Inside is a pretty neat exhibit about Italian history and culture, though we only passed through here to get to our main objective of the top terrace. This space is pretty great, and after walking around the whole space up here, we had gotten fantastic views back into the city, up to the Capitoline and Janiculum Hills, down into the Imperial Fora, and out to the Colosseum. After we finished here we returned to the apartment by way of the tram, and after gathering some information on my return trip to Rome from Venice and this weekend’s adventure to Pisa and Florence, it was time for some lunch! We all ate and relaxed before heading out to class, where we sang a new song, learned about business at various places like a pharmacy or a bank, made up dialogues, and started to learn about the past tense! After class the “London Four” went to buy our tickets from Venice before I went to studio to work on my iteration of our form. It took a while to make, and by the time I came back it was already past midnight, so after a quick dinner and no more productivity, it was bed time.
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