Random pictures from 3/18/09 and so on... enjoy!!

I like poppies, 3 euros and almost 2 weeks of classically beautiful flowers to brighten my kitchen here.



So I come home late one night from school, and I look up the street and I see these bright lights, so I run in to grab my camera and back down the street to see what's going on... I have no idea what was going on..LOL!! The lights were there for 3 or 4 days, I think it was to honor a Saint of a nearby church but I'm not sure, it was around St. Patty's day but it wasn't for him:)

On my way to see the lights I saw this graffiti on the ground. I thought it was sort of sweet, my Italian is pretty bad but I did recognize this. "Piccola dolce ti amo". It roughly translates to "Little Sweetie, I love you!", now yes, that is romantic, but if she/he doesn't feel the same...it's then translated into a "little Awkward" LOL!!!

There is a church that I really like, the ceilings and continuous barrel vaults and arches are just amazing I believe the name is The Basilica of Saint Mary Above Minerva near the Pantheneon.







St. Peters Baldacchino ( the 50 foot high brass canopy) is a large sculpted bronze canopy designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and located over the high altar and beneath the dome of the Basilica of St. Peter in Vatican City. The baldachin was intended to mark in a monumental way the place of Saint Peter's tomb. It was commissioned by Pope Urban VIII. Works began in July 1623 and ended in 1633.

Also in St. Peters, the main alter designed by Bernini-Cathedra Petri or "throne of St. Peter" a chair which was often claimed to have been used by the apostle, but appears to date from the 12th century. As the chair itself was fast deteriorating and was no longer serviceable, Pope Alexander VII determined to enshrine it in suitable splendour as the object upon which the line of successors to Peter was based. Bernini created a large bronze throne in which it was housed, raised high on four looping supports held effortlessly by massive bronze statues of four Doctors of the Church, Saints Ambrose and Augustine representing the Latin Church and Athanasius and John Chrysostum the Greek Church. The four figures are dynamic with sweeping robes and expressions of adoration and ecstasy. Behind and above the Cattedra, a blaze of light comes in through a window of yellow alabaster, illuminating, at its centre, the Dove of the Holy Spirit.








and a statue of a goddess I attempted to sketch in piazza del popolo.

OK lets see,(gosh I wish I could control how these pictures pop up on this blog so I could describe them better)

There are 2 pictures of a gate with cool sculpture and lamp, can not remember the museum or Palazzo at the moment, I only remember I was there for my Baroque class.

Next I took a random picture of an archway over a busy street while I waited for a bus with my classmated somewhat lost trying to find the catacombs. Yeah, no. I was not impressed with the catacombs, not much to see and I'm super claustrophobic so I wasn't diggin it. ( no photos allowed, but really nothing to see anyway, just wholes.)








The most awesome yummy salad. Around the corner from the Spanish Steps in a little outdoor cafe where I pretended to be Italian one day, I sat and ate 3 (lite) courses for like 2.5 hours and people watched :)

The fountain is Bernini's famous Triton fountain near the Barberini metro stop. Bernini executed of travertine (local marble, that looks like stone) in 1642–43, an over-lifesize muscular Triton, a minor sea god of ancient Greco-Roman legend, is depicted as a merman kneeling on an opened scallop shell. He throws back his head to raise a conch to his lips: from it a jet of water spurts, formerly rising dramatically higher than it does today. The fountain has a base of four dolphins^[1] that entwine the papal tiara with crossed keys and the heraldic Barberini bees in their scaly tails.