The Vatican

The Vatican is actually a small country

 Ruled by the unchallengeable authority of the Pope. The property holding of the country actually extends to a couple of famous basilicas within the city of Rome.

The Basilica within the Vatican lies under the Dome in the picture. The artwork and size within this building defies description.  It is the length of two football fields and the width of almost to the football fields.  The building itself is about 2000 years old. It has sculptures and paintings with in it from all the famous medieval Masters such as Bernini, and Michelangelo.

There are numerous altars and service areas with many pews. It would be possible to have quite a number of services going on at the same time.

Under this massive building is a basement with the burial caskets all the Popes. There were many of them. The first one was St. Peter in 334. Because of some issue that I actually do not remember he was crucified on the very sight that the Basilica is built.

500,000 people fill the Square in front of the Basilica each Easter. If there is a special event like the introduction of the latest pope this figure can almost double.  I cannot imagine what a madhouse this area must be with that many people squeezed in to this area even though it is a very expansive Square. 

The grandeur and opulence of the Vatican defies description. 

Adrienne, Harv and Wendy braved the 2.5 hour line to visit the Sistine Chapel. I spent that te wandering throughout the endless number of back-alley streets in the old part of Rome in awe at the numerous ancient buildings and churches. It was here I discovered the 11th UNESCO world heritages site of our holiday, Santa Maria Magiorre--one of two properties within the governance of the Vatican but not located within the boundaries of the state. 

United Nations heritage sites so far

Throughout the last month on this trip saw us blessed with the opportunity of visiting 11 UNESCO world heritage sites. 

They include:

Swiss Alps Jungfraujoch Aletsch

Old walled city of Dubrovnik 

Stari Grad on island of Hvar, Croatia

Historical complex of Split with palace 

          of Diocletian     

Venice downtown

Duomo cathedral in Florence

The old Florence 

The old walled city of Siena

Rome down town

Vatican City

 Santa Maria Maggiore Cathedral in Rome

In August of 79 AD mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the city of Pompeii with over 20 ft of ash. 11.000 Romans died that day. The city remained interred for 1.700 years 

Rome and the Vatican

The coliseum. This amazing structure is 180 meters long and held up to 50,000 people for special events and gladiator games.

The games went on for one full day with hundreds of exotic animals, prisoners, and eventually gladiators, some of whom were also criminals, being paraded around the internal field area. This field area was located on top of the maze in the center of the picture.  This maze was the basement of the coliseum.   Animals and Gladiators would pop up through the floor using ingenious trapdoors in the field area. The efforts they made to survive each other provided the entertainment to the crowd. 

Outside view

Constantine's arch. Commemorating a roman victory on one of his many campaigns.

He is revered by Christians for finally allowing the religion to exist legally in 334 AD. 

A view of one section of the town of Rome. 

The Victor Emmanuel Monument (first king of Italy) and tomb of the unknown soldier. This monument has the nickname of "wedding cake".

A Jesuit church (typical of paintings in a roman church)

The church ceiling 

There are far too many sites in Rome to show on this small blog. It is truly an amazing city and takes many days to really understand and view. 

Rome is a city blessed with a seemingly infinite amount of good tasting fountain water. The drinking fountains are everywhere and always flowing with good tasting tap water. You never need to purchase bottled water. Just bring a container !

Also there are s number s large public fountains that date back centuries. Many of them are iconic. 

Sienna

On our drive to Siena we steered a little off course to see San Gimignano (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gimignano)

This walled city is quite large and well restored, to the point were there are many tour busses filling the narrow well restored streets with far too many tourists and way too many merchants. However the incredible quality of the restoration make the town an interesting visit. 

Siena is another beautiful walled city on Tuscany, much larger than San Gimignano and known for the many towers.  Located between Florence and Rome, it had immense strategic value 1,000 years ago. This was when the city states within italy were often at war. 

Being very old , the streets are extremely narrow and merchants set up shop in small streetside "rooms". 

Under the town is a labyrinth of 300 rooms and 16 miles of tunnels in sandstone 

Tuscany is known for its high quality wines, but there is also no shortage of very good $5 bottles of good Merlot and Pinot Grigio--wine that would be $18 at home!

Our residence in Siena was an ancient brick estate that had been total renovated and even had a courtyard and salt water pool. Also it included a small olive plantation with a tranquill sitting-reading area nestled within the trees. 

During one of our days we visited Monteriggioni. It too was a strategic walled city just north of Sienna. It was quite small in size; you could walk from one gate to the gate at the other side of town in a few minutes. It overlooked hundreds of acres of Tuscan vineyards. Unlike most of the touristy cities, Monteriggioni was very peaceful and serene. http://www.monteriggioni.info

Church in Siena

Florence

The Florence Diomo. Harvey and I actually hiked to the very top of this dome. It was mainly a spiral staircase and then an area where we crawled between that was part of the dome and the interior part of the dome. It was 414 steps up and the same number down. That is quite amazing when you consider there are actually two domes, one on the inside and then the roof on the outside and you walk-crawl in between them. 

Florence has a river through the middle and many bridges across the river but the water in Florence however is much dirtier. 

Unbelievably big doors are everywhere in this town   

... as are an incredible number of enormous statues at almost every turn.

Enormous cathedrals dominate several of the city Squares

No one in this town. Everything is brick or rock and many many hundreds of years old. It is quite amazing in Florence what good condition the buildings are in. Venice is located in almost a marshy like island. However Florence must have a good foundation because the many cathedrals statues and apartment blocks are in very good shape.

Venice

What an enormous and ancient city.  Everywhere you go there rock block buildings with canals being used as roadways rather than cars and other vehicles. Virtually no one lives in houses. Almost the ccomplete population is housed in apartment blocks that range from 4 to 6 stories high. 

There are many bridges over the canals. This enables walking throughout the city very easy.

Boat traffic is constant. We were amazed at how skillfully the drivers maneuver their  craft. 

Like Split and in Croatia, we were amazed to see that shopping mall actually exists in the narrow streets and Rockwall areas. This mall sells the latest and everything from clothes to cameras, food to hardware etc

Regarding wine and food. Ade and Wendy have often served up the greatest meals from our local purchases and we make a point of eating either lunch or dinner out and one of the innumerable restaurants within the old city