La Vita Romana: Stones and Bones

Not much has happened in the last couple of days. We've only had a couple of site visits with Ricardo, but they've been pretty cool.

On Tuesday (5 July), I woke up to a thunderstorm. It was raining really hard (hard enough to flood the Campo) and thundering for about 20 minutes. However, it was enough to make everything really wet so our meeting time was delayed an hour because it's not nice to walk around Rome with large puddles everywhere. After the rain stopped and the sun came out, we visited two churches -- San Luigi dei Francesi and Basilica di Sant'Angelo. These churches were significant because they contained a large amount of work by Caravaggio -- a Renaissance master that followed in the footsteps of Leonardo da Vinci that used dark colors and shadows to highlight the minimalist focus of his works. San Luigi dei Francesi has organ concerts every Friday and Saturday so I may try to attend one. The rest of the day was spent napping and going on a successful search for a 10 euro 2-course meal.

On Wednesday (6 July), I saw lots of amazing things -- the first of which was the crypts of the Capuchin Monks. They made a crypt with 4000 skeletons! It was amazing and it was actually really artistic. I've sort of discovered that I have this fascination with dead things while I've been in Rome -- when I get to a church, I run to the glass cases with embalmed bodies and this crypt was amazing! I'm not morbid, I just think it's interesting. Sadly and understandably, no pictures were allowed, but I'm including some that I found online.

After visiting the Capuchin Crypt it was time to walk down one of the nicest streets in Rome, Via Veneto, to Villa Borghese. This villa has an amazing collection of art -- especially statues by Bernini. I have found some new favourite sculptures: "Apollo and Daphne" and "The Rape of Proserpina." These pieces were so amazing to see the way that the human body of Daphne was transforming into a nymph at a moment in time. Her toenails were turning into roots, her legs into bark, and her fingernails and hair into leaves. "The Rape of Proserpina" was amazing for its detail -- you could actually see the impression of the skin where Pluto was grasping onto Proserpina. No pictures were allowed in this gallery, but here are some photos I found online.