Visiting the Villa
Borghese Museum in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
We walked around Ancient Rome’s Forum and admired the columns we could see on roofless buildings. We ended up at Rome’s current city hall and sat on the terrace on the backside of the building and watched a golden sunset set over the Forum.
A
concert was going on in the front of the Town Hall, so we listened to that as
Laurent started picking out the various buildings in the Forum that we had
passed in front of on our walk with a guide.
I
felt like this evening was the first time that I was able to relax in public in
Rome; roving bands of gypsy children tried to steal purses in Rome in the 1980s.
We
walked back along Via Cavour, which is a bit of a red light prostitute district. Prostitutes stood on corners and openly
solicited people. The Roland Garros
Tennis Courts and the Bois de Boulogne had a serious prostitution problem in
Paris during the 1980s, too, with transgender prostitutes from Brazil.
The
next day we took the subway to the Villa Borghese Museum. We bought a Museum guide outside in the park.
The
second floor of the museum with paintings was closed when we visited making the
Museum free to see the sculpture collection.
Frankly, the sculpture collection in this Museum is so magnificent that
I hardly missed the painting.
My
favorite sculpture was Bernini’s rendering of Daphne as she runs away from
Apollo. The Gods turn her into a tree to
escape her attackers. Bernini captured
her just as the strands of her hair were turning into leaves.
I
was thankful that I was able to see so much of the art that I had studied in
high school and college while I was young and very healthy.
We
exited the gardens onto the symmetrical Piazza del Popolo. From there, we walked to the Spanish
Steps. Everyone gets photos taken in
front of the Spanish Steps despite its being “touristy.”
We
rushed to the Pantheon before it closed. The Pantheon is an Ancient Roman Place of
worship that the Catholic Church recycled for its use. There is a huge dome over it. It made me dizzy just to look up at it.
I
had fun walking back to the hotel, looking at all the ancient villas with papal
nuncios in them.
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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