Italy Precursor: Rome Fave

For the record, I dislike Rome.

In our time there I found it overly crowded, noisy, hot, loaded with people hawking cheap crap, traffic constantly roaring and threatening to mow you down, impossible to navigate ancient streets.  I could go on.

If I could make everyone vanish and compress things down to just the incredible history and architecture I’d be all for it.  That part of it was amazing and humbling.  So for this final preamble post that’s what I’m focusing on – what made me feel really, really small.

The Pantheon and Coliseum and Forum were awe inspiring in their respective scale and design.  And then we hit the Vatican and it’s like… wow.  Also for the record I hold no religious belief and I will go no further in that regard.  But the scope of Vatican City was fairly mind numbing, moreso when considering that space gets completely filled with people.  We spent time walking around in hot sun one afternoon before retreating to the Vatican Museum.  And afterwards when faced with the massive line heading into St. Peter’s Basilica… we caved.

No chance were we going to brave the hours-long lineup in front of us so at that point we parted ways with the world’s smallest city-state.  Fortunately my wife had the good sense to persevere and get up early the following morning and try again.  No lineups to speak of so we went straight in and were absolutely slack-jawed at the space before us.  Awe-inspiring the scale of it all.

The other great thing about that time of day is the light.  Shooting straight into the front windows it’s clear there was no accident in the design nor orientation of the structure.  Incredible beams of light poured through.  It was arguably the most mind-blowing thing I had seen since touching down almost 3-weeks prior.  And so that’s where I stood for a period just absorbing, and then shooting.

Given the time of day the sun was almost directly facing the Basilica and so the rays were pretty much blasting straight in.  On one side lighting up fellow tourists sharing the experience, on the other a couple of visiting priests (Monks? Priests-in-Training?  They wore monk-like robes and sashes but I know not of the attire and associated relevance so please correct if necessary), and in the middle the meticulously tiled floor of the open plaza.

For different reasons this was a spiritual experience and a fitting end to our stay.  Also made me forget the madness outside for a brief period.