ArtFund

A very brief post this morning as I'm not feeling too well. But this post has been a long time coming. Earlier this year I was given a National Art Pass from ArtFund to use and review and I have to say, it's utterly fantastic! The pass itself allows you access to hundreds of historical sites, museums and art galleries across the UK at discounted prices. Benefits of this fantastic pass include 50% off many major exhibitions, special events such as lectures and private parties, a monthly magazine as well as access to an exclusive shop. And if you buy one of these passes you are also helping Art Fund to help museums and galleries across the country buy art to go on display.

It really is a fantastic little card and one I intend to make good use of! Especially since there are many museums included in the list of sites that accept this card around my area! And when I do eventually get to one of these places I shall be doing a little review here!

I would highly recommend getting yourself one of these passes here

For more information on the National Art Pass and ArtFund please do visit their website.

Adventures in Roma - Part 3

Thursday was our final full day in the Eternal City. We made sure we got up super early and got to the Colosseum before opening at 8.30am, and I am so glad that we did. The queues were not long and there weren't tour guide touts about to try and charge us 3x the normal entry price. The Colosseum is such a breathtaking place, and having learnt about it during my modules on Ancient Rome at University, it has somewhere I have always wanted to see.

I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised by how low the entry fee was. As I'm still under 25, and a citizen of the EU my ticket cost only €7.50, and that paid for access to both the Colosseum and the Roman Forum area. My partner had to pay full price, but even €12 was a bargain.

Now then, you'll all know as well (at least I hope you all know!) that I am a big fan of the Assassin's Creed series. Rome is the setting for AC: Brotherhood and the Colosseum plays quite a big part in bits of the storyline. It was kind of cool wandering around this amazing building thinking, "So Ezio jumped right off the top of that into a pile of hay, and there's an imaginary hidden tomb underneath the building". And that is the end of my Assassin's Creed fangirling for this post. Now then, back to the serious stuff.

As we walked through the entrance, both of us just stopped and went, "wow..."

Most of us know what the Colosseum was used for. Or at least I hope we do. And considering as how this is a history blog, I hope you won't mind if I indulge in a little history on this most amazing building.

The Colosseum was begun by Vespasian in AD72 and completed by Titus in around AD80. It was Titus who officially inaugurated the Colosseum with shows that lasted for no less than 100 days at a time. Construction was therefore hugely rapid, taking less that 10 years to complete, however later Emperors made changed to the structure. Domitian made the final changes to the building. As we all (or most of us, I hope) know, that the Colosseum was used for both gladiatorial combat and venationes (hunting wild animals in the arena). One such Emperor, Commodus, apparently took part in gladiatorial combat himself and called himself a gladiator. Though it seems that he was never actually in any real danger! The structure went through many repairs during its lifetime, however in the 4th and 5th centuries material from the Colosseum began to be looted and reused which is what eventually lead to it looking the way it does today. All throughout the middle ages and Renaissance the structure was basically used as a quarry for building materials (I overheard a tour guide at the pantheon saying that a lot of the outer facing stones were looted and used in church building, but I don't know whether that's true or not. Again, not so hot on my Roman history). According to a book I picked up at the Colosseum bookshop (La Regina, 221), even the Pope's plundered some of the stones to help build St Peters!! It was also used as a container for animals! In 1675, by Papal degree, it was made official that the Colosseum would be used to honour the memory of all the Christian Martyrs who had lost their lives there.

The archaeologist in me obviously got very very excited at seeing this building. Although it was only in the Nineteenth century that the first systematic excavations of the building were completed. And during this time major restoration work was begun. These days the Rome Archaeological Service looks after the building, preserves it and conducts further excavations as and when they are needed.

The photo just above, although it just looks like a bunch of stones got me really rather excited. Behind a massive iron grate were all these bits of masonry. And each and every one of them had some of the most beautiful carvings on them. As I said, the archaeologist in me got really excited.

Once we were finished with the interior of the Colosseum we decided to make use of our tickets and head up to the Forum. Once we excited though, we realised that actually we were out of water and the day was getting hotter and hotter. It wasn't even midday and the temperature was already creeping up towards 40 degrees. So we sat in the shade for a bit to try and recharge our batteries before setting off. And in the mean time I took a couple of pictures of the most amazing Arch of Constantine.

The Arch of Constantine is the largest triumphal arch known and dedicated to Emperor Constantine. Aka the bloke who made Christianity legal in Rome and stopped all the persecutions. The arch was dedicated to Constantine in AD 315 by the senate and people of Rome to commemorate his victory at Milvian Bridge. From the Fifteenth Century study and restoration work was carried out on the Arch was continues to this day. I won't go any further into the history of either the Arch or the Colosseum because to be quite honest there is enough information on them both to fill three theses on both subjects separately!

After this we began to make our way towards the entrance to the Archaeological and Forum area, swinging by a quick drinks stand to see how much a bottle of water was. After seeing a tiny bottle, which the stall had put ice cubes in being sold for €2, we decided against it, remembering that there were fountains in the forum area. Said fountains would prove a lifesaver within the next hour or so, I can tell you!

We didn't spend much time in this area because it was just painfully hot and we were struggling. When we eventually found one of the water fountains (by the arch of Titus), we ended up sinking down onto a stone bench underneath the trees and filling our massive two litre bottle up at least three times after draining the thing. Even that wasn't enough!! Because of this we didn't get to see any of the majorly important parts of the area here, but we did see the Via Nova, the Nymphaeum and the Arch of Titus which if I'm honest, in that heat, was more than enough. We agreed as we made our way out of the area that we would visit when the weather was a little bit (aka, a lot cooler!) so we could see more! However, here are a couple of pictures that I did manage to take.

 

Archaeology hjdshdfshfdks *flails about* - yep actual archaeology going on. No archaeologists about though, probably because you know...heat and stuff.

After we crawled out of the Forum area, barely able to stand and still chugging yet another 2 litres of water, we decided to hop back on the Metro and head back to the Battistini area so I could see the one little place left on my "To See While In Rome" list as well as to find some lunch. When we got there we decided to try and find this Irish bar we had seen advertised (the other half was fed up with Italian food and didn't really like the Italian pizzas all that much ha!). So off we went and spent a pleasant couple of hours in a little pub that reminded us somewhat of home. It's a shame everything was so expensive though...but anyway, we managed to recharge our batteries, have a bit of a moan over the price of our lunch and then set back out to find the Convento Di Cappuchini.

Now then, this fabulous little Convento and Crypt deserves a post all of it's own. Mainly because in such a teeny place there is just so, so much history and it is incredibly moving. So keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of days for that one!

Further reading

La Regina, A (ed), 2011, Archaeological Guide to Rome, Electa: Milan

Adventures in Roma - Part 2

Our original plan on our second day in Rome had been to go to the Colosseum. But we overslept and by the time we got there the crowds were huge and we ended up being accosted by more tour guide people wanting to charge us extortionate prices for the tour. No thanks. So we decided that the Colosseum would be done the next day, that we would get up early to avoid the crowds, and off we headed to the Pantheon!

It has long been a dream of mine to see the Pantheon. I honestly think it is one of the most beautiful buildings in the entire world. So, as we got off the metro at Battistini and began to walk towards the Piazza de Rotunda, I could feel my excitement growing.

First of all however, due to the insane heat (seriously, it was around 40 degrees every day we were there!), we decided to swing into the nearest gelataria and get ourselves some famous Italian gelato.

It seems that the place we had chosen was actually quite a posh place. I was expecting it to come in a little cardboard pot or something. But nope, posh glass bowl and biscuit was the order of the day. It ended up being quite expensive, but it was tasty. The one I had was made up with Nutella!

Following this we began our search for the Pantheon, and got ourselves rather confused. However, thanks to actually looking up directions on the net the night before we knew that it wasn't all that far from the Trevi fountain. We wanted to see the Fountain anyway, and realised it would be easier to find the Pantheon if we found the fountain first. And when we rounded a corner, and saw not only a massive crowd but quite possibly the world's most beautiful fountain, I was blown away...

The history of the Trevi fountain is really quite interesting, as the beautiful carvings we see today weren't finished until 1762! However there has been a fountain in the area since around 19BC. It is actually the decoration of a termination of the Virgo Aqueduct and was created by Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa. It was however in the Fifteenth Century that Pope Nicholas V ordered that a new fountain be built there, which was the beginnings of the beautiful monument we see today.

Of course while we were there we had to have some pictures taken in front of it, and I did the whole throwing a coin over my shoulder and making a wish. I'm not going to tell you what I wished for though...

Once we were finished at the Fountain we made a slow bimble down the side streets towards the Piazza de Rotunda. There weren't too many people down the little streets when we were there thankfully so it gave me the chance to take some pictures.

And then, as we dodged various restaurant people trying to get us to eat in their establishments, we entered the Piazza de Rotunda....and there it was.

The Pantheon is the oldest and most preserved Roman building in the entire city. And it is totally breathtaking. We stood out the front gazing up at it for such a long time before actually going inside. I couldn't believe for a moment that I was stood there.

The Pantheon that we see today is actually a replacement built by Emperor Hadrian between AD 118-125. The original Pantheon, built in 27 BC by Marcus Aggripus, burnt to the ground in around AD 80. In fact the Latin inscription above the entrance is still the original dedication to Marcus Agrippus and reads: “Marcus Agrippa son of Lucius, having been consul three times made it”. Nowhere on the building we see today, has Hadrian's name written on it.

Today, the Pantheon is used as a Church (and a tourist attraction, obviously) but back in the day it would have been a temple to the Roman Gods. It has been used as a church since around AD 608 when it was given to Pope Boniface VIII.

Inside, it just gets even more breathtaking.

The dome, with it's occulus completely blew me away and I took so many pictures of it. Reading up on how it is built is so interesting too, although going into the architecture of the place would end up needing a post or five all of their own. However, the dome is made up of a series of interconnecting arches which rest on a series of 8 pillars which consequently correspond to the bays at the floor level which house the statues. As I said, the architecture of this beautiful place involves a blog post all of it's own so I won't go into any more detail of it here.

There was one particular place in the Pantheon that made me flail a little (*cough* a lot) and that was the tomb of the quite frankly awesome Raphael! Yep, Raphael the famous Renaissance painter guy who did all that painting in the Vatican.

Raphael has to be one of my favourite Renaissance artists, second only to Leonardo Da Vinci so it was a big moment for me to stand in front of his tomb.

Back outside in the Piazza is a rather beautiful fountain, the water of which is lovely and cold! Of course I didn't totally put my hands in there to cool off........Anyway, a lovely lady offered to take a photo of me and my partner whilst we were there, and the picture is lovely. He has asked me not to put said picture up on the blog though. So have some pictures of the fountain in question instead.

And that was that. We had agreed to make this day a bit easier, considering as how we had exhausted ourselves the day before, so we took a slow bimble back towards the metro, stopping off for some lunch in a restaurant down one of the high streets. This was probably the biggest mistake of the day...as it was so close to the Pantheon, they obviously thought they could get away with charging through the roof for stuff. Ok, so the food was priced as to what we expected (9 euros for a pizza, still a bit steep), but when we got the bill we realised that we had probably had the most expensive cans of diet coke in the entire city. €3.50!!!!!

After finishing our lunch we headed back for the metro via some of the shops in the side streets where I picked up a bottle of limoncello. As we were almost back at the station, I noticed a bar which my seventeenth century self flailed a lot over...

That Samuel Pepys gets everywhere!!!

Adventures in Roma - Part 1

Before I jump into a massive review of my 4 days in Rome, I wanted to say a huge thank you to Sarah from Remembering The Executed and Sarah's History for looking after the facebook page while I was away. And also a massive thank you to Regina Jeffers and Susan Abernethy for their fantastic guest posts too!

I'm going to start from our second day in the city of Rome because on day 1 we did little more than travel, get hopelessly confused on the metro and ended up in a super expensive restaurant on the advice of the receptionist at our hotel. Anyway, on our second day (which was also my 24th birthday!) we headed for the Vatican. Once we arrived at the correct metro station (we got off at the wrong one originally!), we had a wander and found the Vatican Museum but ended up super dismayed at the massive queues so went for a wander elsewhere. And then we got hopelessly lost and discovered that in Italy, things aren't signposted very well (even massive stuff like St Peter's Basilica!) and you really need a map if you're doing anything in the city of Rome. So after I sat down due to having a massive hypoglycemic attack (Type 1 diabetes and 40 degree heat really doesn't mix well), we asked for some directions and found we were actually nearly there! So off we toddled around to the main piazza, stopped off in a little souvenir shop to buy a couple of hats because we had been very silly and forgot to bring any sort of hat with us (seriously, it was needed!) and started to make our way towards St Peter's Basilica.

As we made our way across the Piazza, we were stopped by a young man with a very strange accent. It was a mix of both welsh and American - we later discovered that the reason for this was because he had spent many years studying at the American University of Rome, and had thus picked up the accent. Anyway, it seems he was part of a tour guide company and spoke to us about what they did. And after seeing the queues at the museum we jumped at the chance of a guided tour and the chance to skip the queues. So off we went with the tour guide, handed over 40 euros (ouch!!! Bit steep, but ended up being totally worth it!) and headed into the first stop of the tour - the Vatican Museums.

I'll say here now that the guy who was our tour guide was utterly fantastic and terribly knowledgeable. Whilst we didn't spend that much time in the museums, he showed us all the really important stuff and afterwards we had the chance to stay on and go to St Peter's with him or spend more time in the museums. I never caught his name, but if the awesome American tour guide who took us on a tour on the 31st July is reading this then thank you!

One of the first views we were given after entering the museums was that of St Peter's basilica. I was utterly stunned when I saw it, and felt a little teary. Our tour guide then explained that when the Church was built, the Pope at the time ordered that no building in the city would be built higher than the church. That's why you don't see any skyscrapers and super duper tall buildings in the city of Rome!

I have to admit that I spent the majority of the time in the museum looking up at the stunning ceilings.

We then found ourselves in a beautiful courtyard full of lovely marble statues, and the guide explained that most of the statues we would see wouldn't actually have their er...genitalia...instead we would see fig leaves covering the area. The reason for this is that the Pope decided that naked men in his museum wasn't really so appropriate. So he hired some artisans to get their chisels and chisel off their bits.

In this same courtyard was this statue. Now I'm not too hot on my Roman history, obviously as I'm sure you're aware I'm more into my seventeenth century stuff. But this statue is apparently super famous and went missing for like, 1000 years. Then not so long ago, some peasant dug it up in his back garden and it was immediately recognised. Now, apparently the museum celebrates its birthday on the day that this statue was found. As I say, I'm not hot on my Roman history, but it is certainly a stunning piece of art! The piece is called "il gruppo del lacoonte" and shows a scene from the Aenid, written by Virgil.

There was one room in the museums that was a miniature replica of the Pantheon, and even had the domed ceiling - albeit without the occulus in the middle. I was absolutely stunned when I walked into this room, and even more so when our guide explained what the massive tub thing was in the middle of the room...

 

 Now, this tub is one of the most expensive things in the entire Vatican museum. It's made of a stone that is apparently super expensive and costs millions per square metre or however stone is measures. Now then, this bath tub belonged to Emperor Nero who, thanks to Horrible Histories, is one of my favourite Roman Emperors despite that fact he was a nasty piece of work.

The Gallery of Tapestries was probably one of my favourite galleries in the entire museum. Flash photography wasn't allowed in here so I did my best to get some good pictures. But the main reasons I loved this gallery so much is because this is all Renaissance era work, designed by the famous Raphael. Below are some pictures of these most exquisite tapestries:

 

Directly after this gallery was the Gallery of Maps, in which there are a series of maps showing parts of Italy and if you line up every single one of these maps they make a massive map of Italy! I thought that was awesome. Also, this room has the most stunning roof of all time.

Obviously, inside the Sistine Chapel we weren't able to take photographs. Whilst I found the paintings absolutely exquisite, especially Michelangelo's Last Judgement, due to the sheer amount of people crushed into the room I didn't feel as if I could appreciate the room to its full extent. A shame. Instead, after we said good bye to our tour guide we went and had a further wander around the museums. Have a few more pictures.

Coptic tablet in the Egyptian Gallery.

 

Shabi figurines - Egyptian gallery

 

Me and Anubis are totes best buddies

Following the Egyptian rooms, we endeavoured to make our way to the Borgia apartments. You lot already know that I adore the Borgia family, so as we were there I just had to go and see the rooms in which Pope Alexander VI lived, the rooms in which Cesare Borgia was said to commit many atrocities. I'll mention now that before we took our leave from our tour guide, he started spouting a load of rubbish about the Borgia family saying that they poisoned each other and were inherently evil and Cesare was definitely involved with his sister. I had to bite my tongue and walk away before I said something I would regret. Anyway, as we were wandering around the Borgia apartments I found myself tearing up quite badly. I have a massive respect for Lucrezia Borgia so when I saw the following fresco, I may have gotten a little emotional.

The blonde woman in the centre of this fresco is wildly said to be Lucrezia, and this image is featured heavily in all the Borgia books I have read. It was a very emotional moment for me when I walked in and saw this painting, and stood in front of an image of the lovely Lucrezia.

I also did a very short video of the fresco.

The ceilings of the Borgia apartments were also covered in the insignia of the Borgia bull. I was utterly blown away by the beautiful ceilings, and saw their coat of arms and the Borgia bull.

After I'd finished having a massive flail and sob session in the Borgia apartments, we made our way out to St Peter's, via a sweet little gift shop in which there were Nuns serving behind the counter. I thought that was pretty cool and ended up buying a rather sweet necklace off of them. Anyway, gift shops aside, we entered St Peters.

I was blown away when we walked through those doors, absolutely blown away. The entire church was just stunning, and although I'm not really all that religious I found myself getting a little emotional. The photos of St Peter's that I took aren't that great as my camera thought it would be fun to throw a hissy fit, so below are the best of a bad bunch.

This list of Pope's vexed us somewhat because it certainly isn't a list of their reign as Pope. I took a closer photo of part of it to show you guys what I mean:

I mean, you've got Alexander VI with a date of 1503, and also Pius III with 1503. Any ideas?

Thanks to MadamGuillotine for explaining this - and to be honest as a Borgia lover I probably should have known this. It seems to be a list explaining the dates of death and burial of the Popes. Pius III succeeded Alexander VI in 1503, but died like a month later. That makes more sense now.

And that is when my camera battery died. After this we made our way out of the church and headed back to the Metro, or at least tried to because we got hopelessly lost. We ended up sitting on the pavement in a tiny side street and breaking out google maps (darn you data roaming charges just so we can find our bearings). But we made it back to the hotel, very tired and with really achy feet. But it was totally worth it!