Tuesday, June 24th
Day three in Rome! Our last “class” day (sad face). We started by going to a few churches that had examples of baroque art by Carvaggio along with a baroque church, which was probably my favorite style of art that we’ve looked at. It was darker and much more dramatic than a lot of the other stuff we’ve seen, and the church was more symmetrical all around. After that we went to the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi in the Piazza Navona. This was definitely my favorite piazza we’ve been to, the combination of the huge fountain with the soft guitar playing in the background made it so serene. I felt like I was in one of those cliche Italian love movies. It had peaceful but still full of energy atmosphere that you imagine when you think of going to Italy. Our next stop was the pinnacle of our Rome tour: the Vatican.
On the way to the Vatican City, Kirk stopped and got us all gelato and this was without a doubt the best gelato I’ve had in Italy! The Gelateria had very unique flavors like chocolate and wine, rosemary, fig and nuts, and they were all delicious. I wish I would have known about it earlier because I probably would have kept going back until I tried every flavor. Once we got to Vatican City we walked through another maze of amazing art including School of Athens, walls of tapestries, and many sculptures until we arrived to the beautiful Sistine Chapel. Everyone has seen pictures of the Sistine Chapel, but it is so much more amazing in person. Most of the time you see single panels of it such as the Creation of Adam, but in real life you can see how high the ceiling is, and how large it actually is. The chapel ceiling was larger as a whole than I thought, but the single panels were much smaller than I thought they would be. You’re also not allowed to take pictures (or talk) in the Sistine Chapel, but I was not leaving there without a few. The ceiling was breathtaking and I all I could do was stare at it thinking about how Michelangelo, a single man, stood on a scaffolding and painted the whole thing.
Then we moved onto St. Peter’s Basilica, our final stop of the trip. It was without a doubt the biggest and most grandiose basilica. Today was definitely worthy of being our last class day. Everywhere we went was the best of the best and somehow managed to one up everything else. Every piazza, basilica, and gelateria paled in comparison to the ones we went to today.
Nguyen In Rome 