Day 2

The hotel where we are staying has an awesome spread of breakfast food each morning as part of the room rate (124€). After we filled our faces the four of us took the city bus to the Borghese Gallery. We had ordered tickets weeks before on the Internet and were looking forward to seeing something that was not a part of our Rick Steves tour four years ago. The bus ride gave us a chance to ride with the locals to their employment or schools in the city. While we missed our exit by a couple of blocks an older lady guessed where we were going and advised us how to notify the driver to stop and how to exit the bus. Everywhere we went, people were helpful even if they spoke only Italian.
The visit to the Borghese was stimulated by our viewing of the HBO series, The Medici, who were the most powerful family in Florence. The Borghese family was the power in ancient Rome. While we missed seeing that series, we knew that both families had a passion for money, power and great accumulations of art and sculpture. Both families were also intertwined in the Catholic Church hierarchy that "facilitated" their rise to power. The Gallery in Rome is a respectable display of gorgeous pieces of art where money was no object. I use the adverb"respectable" because it wasn't the size of the Louvre in Paris or the New York Metropolitan Museum of Fine Art. However, the quality of what was on display was enough to meet anyone's expectations for an over-the-top gallery of fabulous pieces of art!

The Galleria Borghese houses a substantial part of the Borghese collection of paintings, sculpture and antiquities, begun by Cardinal Scipione Borghese who, coincidentally, was the nephew of Pope Paul V (reign 1605–1621).
Scipione Borghese was an early patron of Gianlorenzo Bernini-one of the greatest sculptors and artists of all time. Bernini's Apollo and Daphne is one of the centerpieces of the Gallery and shows the chaste nymph Daphne being turned into a laurel tree, pursued in vain by Apollo god of light.
The life-size marble sculpture, begun by Bernini at the age of twenty-four and executed between 1622 and 1625, has always been housed in the same villa, but originally stood on a lower and narrower base set against the wall near the stairs. Consequently anyone entering the room first saw Apollo from behind, then the fleeing nymph appeared in the process of metamorphosis: bark covers most of her body, but according to Ovid's lines, Apollo's hand can still feel her heart beating beneath it.Thus the scene ends by Daphne being transformed into a laurel tree to escape her divine aggressor.
The presence of this pagan myth in the Cardinal's villa was justified by a moral couplet composed in Latin by Cardinal Maffeo Barberini (later Pope Urban VIII) and engraved on the cartouche on the base, which says: Those who love to pursue fleeting forms of pleasure, in the end find only leaves and bitter berries in their hands.
In modern terms I might suggest that the lover coming up short in his lust for love might simply Tweet "nuts!" meaning he is left standing with those bitter berries.








Bernini is also responsible for sculpting his rendition of the vision and Ectasy of Saint Teresa in which a Spanish nun swoons in heavenly rapture at the point of an angel's arrow. Deb and I saw this piece of work the last time we were in Rome. On that tour there was a bit of a twitter among our fellow American tourists as they reflected on the symbolism of all of this.

Lest we forget, Bernini is the guy who was the architect of St. Peter's Basilica. No small task! He set the stage for Michelangelo and other artists who have adorned this Holy place over hundreds of years.

Bernini was also responsible for transforming the small existing piazza in front of St Peter's into the largest and grandest square in the world, or rather a key shaped device of colonnades, which branch out from the church in a narrowing stem, then form into two halves of a circle, which encompasses an obelisk and two fountains. During his long and intensive service to the Church, Bernini effectively completed the setting and interior of St Peter's. Indeed his contribution to the church as we see it today is greater than that of any other artist, including Michelangelo.

We got our first Italian rain coming out of the Gallery as we walked through the gardens. The thunder and lightning changed our minds about walking in the rain. We hailed a cab for the ride to the Piazza de Populo. There we dashed from the cab and into the closest restaurant to wait out the storm. Here is a photo of the Americans drying out.









Outside we took in views of the piazza originally intend to greet ancient travelers to the city center.





Folks came through this gate and looked straight ahead to the road ahead between two symmetrically- shaped churches.





We made our way down to the Spanish Steps and past some of the most expensive shopping in Rome. Gucci, Jimmy Choo shoes, Hermes, Visache and Fendi purses were but a few of the classy shops along the way. Right in the middle of the riches was a basilica. I prayed in the church while Ann tried (unsuccessfully) to enter Fendi's. Skip found the gelato shop.







The Rome Basilica (not the Pope's place in the Vatican)






Spanish Steps






Gelato