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Renaissance Rome
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Courtesy of and © Romanhomes |
alfway between via del Corso and Piazza Barberini on via del Tritone
you'll find a street on the south side called via Mortaro. It leads to via Poli which will
take you in two blocks to the Trevi Fountain. A homely area,
and generally overcrowded (with tourists like us), but a beautiful fountain, especially
since they've renovated and cleaned it. With your back to the fountain, coin thrown by
right hand over left shoulder (or is it left hand over right shoulder?) into the fountain
guarantees you'll return to Rome. (It's worked often for us!) A rarely visited fountain
until the movie, Three Coins in the Fountain.
xit to the west on via delle Muratte to the
Corso, and turn left. Walk toward Piazza Venezia until you come to the via Lata, the last
street on your right before the large building occupying the entire block before the
Piazza. Turn in at via Lata and you'll find the entrance to the Palazzo
Doria Pamphilj in Piazza del Collegio Romano. The Palazzo has been the home of the
most important Roman family since the 17th century. It's open regularly from 10 to 5, with
guided tours of portions of the private apartments between 10:30 and 1. The Gallery price
is ITL12000 and the apartments are an additional ITL5000. You'll find an assortment of
great (and terrible) art, including artists like Titian, Caravaggio, and the Breughels.
It's a worthwhile couple of hours.
hen you're through picking your way through the exceptional
and the worthless, retake your path down the Corso to Piazza Venezia. Cross the Corso
Vittorio Emmanuele and stand for a moment at the corner looking back toward the Corso. The
facade of the Palazzo Doria is considered perhaps the finest
example of Baroque Rococo in Rome. At your back on the corner is the Palazzo
Venezia, once Mussolini's headquarters. Going around the corner you can see the
balcony from which he made his infamous speeches. The entrance is just up the Corso
Vittorio Emmanuele from the corner. There is usually an exhibition inside, and if you're
interested you can see the huge reception hall that served as Mussolini's office, and his
desk. Note the immense space over which visitors had to walk to reach their confrontation
with Il Duce.
eturning to the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele,
head away from the Piazza, and four to five blocks along on the left you'll find the Church of the Gesu, the home church of the Jesuits. It's the finest
example of Baroque in Rome, and if you have time, and it's open, stop in for a brief
visit. While self-effacing in a worldly sense, the Jesuits' purpose was to convert people
to God. Among other tools, they used wondrous (if to many, overly gaudy) architecture to
suggest -- trumpet -- the glory of God and the notion that while a person's present life
may be dreary and difficult, there would be splendor in the afterlife for the good
Christian.
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Pantheon
This eventually becomes via Rotondo, which will in turn take you into Piazza Rotondo, the square in which you'll find the Pantheon.
The interior is quite lovely lovely in its own way, contrasting what we find to be a drab, if grandly momentous, exterior. For a variety of reasons we've often found the Pantheon closed when we happened by. If you find this to be the case, don't worry. While some may disagree with us we think the outside is definitely worth the visit to the site, but the inside, with so much else waiting for us in Rome, is not worth an extra effort.
This points out a couple of problems in reading Latin inscriptions throughout the remains of Roman antiquity:
If you read enough Italian (we do not) one can find a Latin-to-Italian translating dictionary in bookstores in Rome. The proper interpretation of Latin inscriptions is a very fine art indeed. If you're interested in pursuing the subject this link will take you to an excellent series of pages. Great Buildings Online has more photos, text and a 3-D model of the Pantheon.
Piazza Navona is built on the foundations of Domitian's Circus, and you'll recognize the shape. A Christmas fair fills it in December. There are three fountains, of which the one in the center is world class, the fountain of the four rivers. The Tre Scalini ice cream shop (Gelateria) is just to the west of the fountain. Tre Scalini is famous, justly, for its Tartufo (Truffle) ice cream, preferably Tartufo con Panna - with whipped cream. Forget the calories ... splurge!
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nother two blocks along and on your left you'll find the Torre
Argentina, a large square. In the center are remains of several Republican
Temples (i.e., before Caesar Augustus, probably 2nd or 1st century before the
Christian Era). Across (on your right as you were walking down Corso V. Emanuele II)
you'll find via di Torre Argentina. 
he Pantheon ('Temple
to All Gods') is the largest dome in Rome (yes ... larger than St. Peter's.) And, if you
have the luck to be there on a rainy day, see how much rain enters ... or doesn't ... the
10m hole (oculus) in the roof. 
o to the north end of the piazza,
past the toy store to see the remains of the stadium foundations. Walk around the corner
to your left and you'll see them below the sidewalk.