Borghese Gallery and St. Peter's Basilica

This weekend was a dive into baroque art, religious, sacred and profane, in a big way!!  Yesterday, we went to the Borghese Gallery, which is a museum in the villa of 16^th century Cardinal Borghese, who was the nephew of the then Pope, filled with opulent paintings, sculptures, mosaics, statues and art of the late Renaissance and early Baroque periods.  Some of the statues by Bernini in the Borghese gallery are just stunning.  His ability to sculpt marble in ways that show the suppleness of skin in the people he is depicting, or wind blowing through hair, or flowing robes, or leaves or flower petals is just mind blowing.   I had to keep reminding myself that this is marble – rock – that he has sculpted into these amazing statues.  And what is even more amazing is that most of the art in the gallery by Bernini is stuff he made in his early 20s!!  I had been told that cameras were not allowed in the gallery so I didn’t bring mine, only to discover when I got there that that particular rule is not followed at all anymore.  So I have no pics from the inside of the gallery, alas.  I did take  few of the extensive and gorgeous grounds around the villa which we walked after we had our two hour tour through the gallery itself.    After our tour through the gallery, we made our way back to Trastevere, stopping at a little shop just outside the Jewish Ghetto which has a delicious assortment of cheeses and cold cuts, like prosciutto.  We stopped for a late afternoon snack/meal of cheese, meats and wine before heading back home.  After we cooled down in the apartment for a little while, we went out along the Tiber river, where there are tents lining the walkway along the river filled with restaurants, bars, eateries, vendors of all sorts etc.  There are thousands of people walking along there and enjoying the scenery and a night out.  We walked along, did a little shopping and had a lite supper by the river, getting home by 10:30 or so.

Today we slept in and then went up to St. Peter’s Square, which is not far from where we are staying.  We went into St. Peter’s Basilica and stayed for Mass.  The basilica really is quite something. Although I saw it when I was here in 2001, it is one of those places that takes your breath away no matter when you walk in there! One change from 2001 was that now to go into the Basilica you have to go through airport-like security before being allowed to enter.  I understand the need for the security but it sure does feel discordant with the nature of the sacred space that you are there to experience.   I enjoyed being at Mass, even though it was all in Italian so I understood very little!  Fortunately, the liturgy is familiar to me so I knew what was going on, just couldn’t follow the language! 

The weather here is beautiful – sunny, blue sky, but really, really HOT!!  Much as I love to walk and can usually go for hours and miles, I get exhausted here pretty quickly because it is just so very, very hot that you wilt in minutes.  One reason I was happy to do St. Peter’s today was that at least we’d be indoors most of the time, out of the sun!

Pics today include a few from the grounds of the Borghese gallery, and some shots at St. Peter’s.