Juliet's Blog: January 2007

The eternal flame(s) traditionally tended by Vestal Virgins - they would be plucked from their families as children and trained for 10 years before spending the next decade making sure the flame stayed alight. Should it go out they were flogged in public with feathers (I think the idea was humiliation) We are in the eternal city, Rome - but let me start at the beginning ...

ROME

What could this be? Yes, it's Bristol airport departure gate, and it is empty! Thanks to the 'sporty' surface of the newly done runway, pilots were refusing to land at Bristol and Cavyll and I are waiting for the bus that will take us to Cardiff airport. Easyjet took all their own staff up there and practically took over. It meant long delays but we were just grateful our flight hadn't been cancelled like a lot of others. Rome here we come!

The bijou en-suite in our budget hotel room. It was sweet - except that you had to remove all the toilet paper and towels before you had a shower and apparently the floor could be slippery if you needed to use the loo in the night!

The word 'palace' comes from this huge house built on the Palatine Hill where Rome was founded. It overlooks the forum and downtown Rome and this room pictured was the private stadium for chariot racing and in the summer it was flooded for boat races. Incidentally, the Vatican was also enormous before Mussolini persuaded the pope to turn it into a museum and move next door. Popes had to get about by donkey and special donkey staircases were built for them.

This has to be the nicest Nativity scene in christendom, but I suppose they have to make a bit of effort at the Vatican don't they? Interestingly Rome was full of christmas decorations even though it was well past 12th night - I suppose catholics are superstitious about so much that a few christmas decorations aren't worth fretting over

Apparently it is unusual to see the floors of the Vatican museums - January is obviously the time to go. The museums are stuffed full of treasures, a considerable number of them pagan.

We were surprised to see Uncle George at the Vatican

The sistine chapel is so full of people and familiar images that being there is a slightly surreal experience - one is supposed to be quiet there and a loud echoing recorded message tells you so in 24 different languages at great length - all the while you are gazing round and sizzling with the experience

On the right as you enter St Peter's Basilica is this sculpture Michelangelo did when he was a fairly unknown 21 year-old, of Mary and Peter. In the 1970s a mad Hungarian leapt onto the statue, shouted 'you are not my mother!' and hacked off lots of bits of Mary before he was overpowered. Most of the pieces were retrieved but someone had pocketed the nose and a couple of fingers and because marble ages inconsistently the statue could not simply be repaired by getting a bit of marble that looked the same. Despite a worldwide plea the souvenir hunter did not own up (I wonder who has a nose and fingers hidden in their house?) In the end a plastic surgeon was consulted and some marble was shaved off the back to reconstruct the missing parts.

The waxed preserved body of a pope whose name I'm afraid quite escapes me. You have to file past the body from right to left. I thought maybe this was so you wouldn't be disrespectfully looking up his nose. Cavyll thought it was so you wouldn't be looking up his cassock

St Peter's Basilica is the largest church in christendom but has been designed to detract from the size so as not to appear intimidating. As an example of just how big it is - this sculpture is the largest bronze sculpture in the world. If it was raised up the whole thing would fit snugly into the little inset in the dome, above. The following picture shows me filling the little bottles I bought (under the counter!) from the nuns, with holy water that the pope kindly blessed for me. It leaked a little in my suitcase on the way home.

When there's that amazing Nativity scene just outside it makes you wonder how they get away with this bit of tat in the Basilica

The elite Swiss Guard

Well what happened was this ... Cavyll and I had been wandering around Rome with the streetlights casting an attractive glow, when we chanced upon a market stall selling these lovely soft leather boots IN MY SIZE for 5 euro !! I was so pleased with my bargain but my happiness was somewhat diminished when we got back to the hotel and I saw, in the light, that my gorgeous new boots were covered in a white bloom. No matter, it meant I could wear them straight away without worrying that the rain would ruin them. We ate at a lovely local restaurant and after only two glasses of wine I thought my boots looked a little odd and realised the top half was coming away from the bottom. This made Cavyll laugh so much that we were forced to leave the restaurant only on our exit the insole of the right boot shot across the floor making it gape like a crocodile mouth. Rain was getting into the left boot but it was of no consequence compared to the fact the right boot was perishing more with every step. I ended up walking into the hotel with a perfectly respectable top half of a boot and only a contrasting blue sock between my foot and the floor. They didn't bat an eyelid.

This is what you see the minute you come out of the metro (except for Cavyll who was trying not to get run over). The Colosseum lives up to its name. What is really awesome is that originally the whole thing, inside and out including the loos, was faced with marble and marble statues adorned each of the 160 doorways on the 1st and 2nd floors. The whole lot was pinched, sorry recycled, by medieval artists.

The Colosseum was built on Nero's lake and the foundations go down a long way. With no stage you can see the network of cages used to keep the wild animals that fought each other here. The only humans killed here would have been gladiators, usually slaves who had been selected for training. Christians were killed at what is now St Peter's Basilica. This is not a coincidence.