Visiting the Villa Borghese Museum in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

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

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Visiting St. Peter's Square in Rome (Italy) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting St. Peter’s Square in Rome (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After visiting the Vatican Museum, we went outside to St. Peter’s Basilica and Square. 

The interior of St. Peter’s Basilica overwhelms with its twisting Baroque columns in gold designed by the architect and interior designer Bernini. 

Michelangelo’s Pièta of Mary holding her dead son glimmers from the sheer white marble it is made of.  The beauty of the stone almost makes you forget the sad subject matter, and the fact that Mary is absolutely huge; the sculptor’s trick to accommodate the sprawling Christ.

Bernini'a Ecstasy of Saint Teresa by Bernini seems to be suspended on nothing as she experiences religious transcendence.

Laurent came back from the crypt where he had been inspecting tombs of popes.  We walked from the cool marble interior of St. Peter’s Basilica outside to the blazing hot St. Peter’s Square.

I liked watching the Pope give his Christmas message from his window looking out over St. Peter’s Square on television every Christmas as a kid in Detroit. 

I even went to Christmas mass at St. Aloysius da Gonzaga Church down the street from my apartment building in downtown Detroit much to the amusement of the priests who presided there.  (They knew I was Protestant at the time.  I was told I could go up to be blessed only with my arms crossed on my chest, because I was a Protestant with a Valois grandma.)

I wanted to stop for a cup of coffee, but Laurent said that would be a waste of money.  I wanted to stand at a Roman espresso bar and read Repubblica newspaper headlines, too.

I could not read Italian very well when we went on our honeymoon.  I can read Italian now thanks to a lot of work at home.  My first books were Rushdie’s La Sonrisa del Jaguar about Nicaragua and L’Isla en Terraforma by Ugo Pirro.  I read Corriere della Sera newspaper if I can now for arts and culture coverage in Italian.

After our big walk around Rome, we took cold showers at home after walking around and passed out for our siesta.  We sat in the air-conditioned lobby of the hotel and wrote “thank-you” postcards to the family.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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Visting the Vatican Museum in Rome with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Vatican Museum in Rome with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

We stayed in the less expensive rooms of a nice hotel called the Hotel Venezia in Rome.  Our room was on a courtyard with a window and moderately noisy neighbors.

We went out to buy groceries.  I really liked the Italian bread and cheese by this point in our honeymoon and liked checking out neighborhoods.  When we came back with our groceries, an Italian police car raced down the street.  4 policemen jumped out of the cars holding machine guns.

We stood still and let them go where they were going.  Even though I am from Detroit, I was even a little unnerved to see 4 machine guns on policemen without riot gear or SWAT gear on.

We walked around the block and peeked around the corner to see if the machine guns were gone.  They were, so we went to our hotel and installed groceries.  Then, we set out for a walk.

Scaffolding to clean buildings blackened by the centuries was everywhere, but I still caught glimpses of the column of Marcus Aurelius and the monument to King Victor Emmanuel, the man who reigned over a Unified Italy as we know it.

The monument looks like a wedding cake and is a good landmark when touring around the city.  We almost got hit by one of the many speeding drivers at this monument. 

Crosswalks are few and far between and generally disobeyed in the Holy City.  A stop sign in Rome appears to be just a suggestion, too.

We went through I do not know how many winding streets to get to the Trevi Fountain.  The piazza housing this place is small and was packed with scantily clad, blond women and Italian men with Guy Fawkes’ plastic surgery faces.

Laurent and I tossed coins into the Trevi Fountain, which is supposed to ensure your return to Rome.  From the Trevi Fountain, we walked to the Piazza Novana.

From what I read in our handy Berlitz guide, the Piazza Novana used to be a Roman Stadium for chariot races and was sometimes flooded to make a swimming pool.  Ancient Romans felt the heat, too.

On the way back to the hotel, we spotted the Pantheon, which we planned to visit.  Back at home port, I showered and could not believe all that we had seen on one night.

Plan A the next day was a visit to the Vatican City and Museums.  We appended ourselves to another tour group.  I knew what I wanted to see in the Vatican Museums and played tour guide for Laurent.

Anyone, who has studied Renaissance art history, would recognize Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.  The colors of the newly restored (translation = repainted) Sistine Chapel glimmered in the sunlight. 

I still think Michelangelo is a better sculptor than painter.  The female bodies he painted, for example, are very bulky.  The breasts on the women also have about 12 inches between them, too.

I was happy to see the Laocoön sculpture.  Laocoön was the Trojan priest, who warned the Trojans not to take the Trojan Horse made by the Greeks into the Gates of Troy.  Sea serpents entwined him and his son and took him down into the depths of the ocean once he made the prophecy.

I was happy that this sculpture has not been destroyed despite its antiquity.  I think the priest knew what was coming and ran away with his kids.  The City of Troy did not have a happy ending.

I could not find the majestic statue of Augustus of Primaporta.  A Swiss Guard let us go into a closed off gallery after I saw the statue in profile and asked if I could see it in Italian with the name of the sculpture.

Most Roman emperors have their busts done to portray their faces as weathered soldiers, who earned their positions waging wars for food supplies and defending the kingdom.  The Louvre Museum in Paris (France) is full of busts like these.

The Augustus of Primaporta is a full-body sculpture with Augustus's face portrayed to look like a Greek deity.  He wanted to be venerated like a God and his clothing reflects this.  Augustus was more into fashion than food for his citizenry that would make Rome remain true to its Republican ideals.

His fashionable "armor" has 3-D figures on it.  This is impractical, because it can be torn off to destroy the clothing and open the emperor to attack.  Augustus could still protect himself, but he relied on well-fed supporters to protect him and keep the rabble down and amused with not-so-great food and circus and gladiator games in the Coliseum.

3-D figures means embossed material.  It is like embossed stationery; somewhat of a waste of money when there are more vital issues to take care of in a community.

The Ancient Romans developed cement.  Irrigation canals are built with cement, but you need engineers to build them and maintain them.  You also need a consistent system of laws to administer the irrigation canals and channels.  You also need judges to settle disputes and some form of law enforcement to back up legal decisions. 

(An aside - most of Europe gets one crop out of its fields in a growing season for one year.  The terraced rice fields in Japan and the Philippines get 2 to 3 crops of rice out of their fields in a single growing years with a more labor intensive crop.   Asian civilization is also very advanced like that of ancient Egypt and Rome.)

We stayed in the Vatican Museum Galleries for 5 hours and still did not see the entire collection.  My art history studies at the University of Chicago allowed me to make a list of important works to see, which we did.

We stopped at the Vatican Post Office to buy stamps for postcards for thank-you letters for wedding gifts.  I knew they would forgive the etiquette breach of not sending cards, if they had conversation-item stamps from the smallest country in the world.

The Sovereign Military of Malta is actually supposed to be the smallest country.  It is located in the Vatican, but I could not find it.  The Swiss Guards would not tell me where it was.

In any case, the visit to the Vatican Museums was worth the whole trip to Italy.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Assisi (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Assisi (Italy) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The homes in Assisi are built with rose- and white-colored stone.  Breezes rushed up the streets.

We took a tour of the Franciscan Basilica.  First, we went to the lower church, which is where Saint Francis (1181 – 1226) is buried.  The lower church’s dark interior made me associate everything there with death.

Mass was in session and black-clad nuns sang all the responses in Latin.  Saint Francis is buried under the altar downstairs, which is why there is a constant prayer vigil around his grave.  Saints’ remains have been stolen and set up as pilgrimage sites elsewhere. (Venice’s San Marco and Santiago de Compostella or Saint James in Spain, for example.)

The upper church with its sunlight streaming in made me feel happy.  The frescoes here depict the life of Saint Francis and are also attributed to Giotto, but American art historians dispute this claim.

One of the paintings shows Saint Francis holding up a church, which alluded to his holding up a corrupt church that chose to co-opt him rather than excommunicate him.  Saint Francis understood that a hideously poor society endangered nobles and the Church alike.  Saint Francis knew how to alleviate some of the suffering of the poor.

After visiting the Basilica, we walked through the streets of Assisi.  Fewer Vespas charged around her, which allowed you to hear birds chirping.  People spoke softly here even in the tourist shops.

I ate bread and cheese for lunch and a fizzy water.  I was still on “wedding-photo diet” on my own budget even though we ate well with my college roommate’s family.

The next church we visited was the church of Santa Clara.  Santa Clara was the friend of Saint Francis.

We were the only tourists in this church.  In a small chapel off to the side is the robe of Saint Francis and a dress and overcoat worn by Santa Clara.

As we were standing by the grate looking at the Saint Francis’s belongings, a Saint Clare nun appeared behind the grate and spoke to us in Italian.  She gave us Saint Francis prayer cards, which I taped into my travel journal later.

The nun had a transparent black veil over her face and was completely covered, so that no part of her body could be seen except for her hands.

We went downstairs to the crypt where Santa Clara’s tomb was under the main altar here, too.  Her remains were moved and can only be viewed from the small window in front of us.

While we were there, a group of black clad nuns came in and pulled a red drape across the window and sang.  Their voices made the hairs on my arms stand up.

When they finished their song, we left very happy with our visit.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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