Pictures? Pictures!

the outside...

the inside.  they put a part of the floor on so you can get an idea of what it looked like.  all those walls and columns below the wood part are where they used to keep the animals and where the gladiators came through.  they had lifts and stuff under there, so they could just push the animals/people up directly into the arena.  kinda sucked for them, but otherwise that's pretty cool, given that it was 2000 years ago...

this is the hill where all the emperors used to live.  it's good to be the emperor.  (until your heir or wife or coworker kills you.)

under all these people are the spanish steps.  still not real clear on why we needed to see them.  from what i can gather they're steps.  and they're spanish.  however, the good news is that right next to them is the keats/shelley house, so we went in and saw the room keats died in, and they have an amazing library and collections of letters.  they were also doing an exhibit of illustrations from various publications of his poems...very cool. 

the trevi fountain.  what i thought was coolest about this was how it was incorporated into the building.  if you look on the right hand side, you can see they way the building looks like it's growing out of the fountain.  (maybe the picture's too small?  don't worry - i have a 14 hour slide show in the wings for when i see you next.)

this is a cool sculpture that was in the courtyard at the vatican. 

i loved this.  whoever hired the sculptor had a crest with a lion on it, so when the artist carved this huge (not terribly interesting) naked guy with a jug, he put the lion in the jug as a tribute to his patron.

the pathway that connects the vatican museum area (i don't remember the proper names for the various sections of vatican city) to st. peter's church.  it looks kind of like an optical illusion, but it's not - that really is the ceiling receding into frickin' infinity.  it's a really long hallway.  or maybe it connects to the sistine chapel?  can't remember. 

anyway - there are maps of italy all along the walls, but they were created for a pope who was really pissed off that he didn't control more of the country, so they are all made to look like what that part of the country looks like From Rome, so say you're looking at something on the west coast of the southern part of the country, the water will be on the right side of the map, because that's where it would be if you were looking at that section while standing in rome.  i'm explaining it poorly, but it was kind of hilarious and terrifying.

this was an absolutely Uh-MAY-zing mosaic on the floor of one of the papal apartments, or a library or something.  it all kinda ran together after a while, but i took about fifteen pictures of this floor.

a matisse crucifix.  we ran through this room at the vatican museum without stopping, but i grabbed a picture.  the glories of being a tourist...

all right.  i'm gonna lose my mind if i have to keep watching the "picture loading" bar inch across the screen, so here's one last shot.  this is part of the ceiling ot of st. peter's.  it's a fairly run-of-the-mill-spectacular-cathedral, except it's bigger. 

it's pretty funny, they have these medals set into the floor that show you how big other cathedrals are in comparison (honestly, they might as well be 8-year-olds on a playground.)  if it gives you some idea how big the place is, the letters in this picture are 6 feet tall.

couldn't resist one more.  this is the real pieta (the one behind glass).  apparently, it's the only piece of work michelangelo ever signed.   (according to our tour guide) he carved it when he was 23, and no one who saw it in the church believed that such a young sculptor could have accomplished it. 

the way she told it, he basically broke into the church one night and carved "michelangelo buonarroti carved this" across mary's sash.  apparently he felt stupid about it later and swore to never sign anything again.  who knows how much of that is true and how much is the fancy of historians.  still - it makes a helluva good story. :o)