Today, while busy, was a phenomenal day.

This was honestly the day that I was personally looking forward to maybe the most. We traveled all over the ancient city making sure to hit the Piazza del Popolo, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon, the Church of St Ignatius, the Trevi Fountain, the Circus Maximus, before finishing with the Catacombs of St Domitilla. The Piazza del Popolo was where we saw the ancient entrance to Rome that has rebuilt. In this piazza we also entered an old church that contained two amazing pieces by the master painter Caravaggio. These pieces were astounding in their beauty and their interesting use of perspective.

We then continued our walk by going to the famed Spanish Steps. To be fair, seeing them in person is so much better than any image can convey. On a personal note, the house where Keats and Shelley lived in is adjacent to the steps and I’ve included a picture of it.

We then took a winding path down to the Pantheon. This was the building for which I had been waiting months to see. It is vastly more impressive than I could have even imagined. The oculus (hole in the top) is a massive 9 meters across, just to help with the scale of things. It is a monstrous building that has stood without fault for nearly 2000 years and looks like it could last thousands more. It also contains the burial place of Raphael, another of the classic masters.

After the Pantheon we wound our way to the church of St Ignatius and I could not believe how beautiful the ceiling of the church is. It uses amazing perspective to make it look as if it truly opens to the heavens and goes on upward into the sky. It was honestly breathtaking. Not to be outdone, just down the street we came upon the Trevi Fountain. It is amazing in both stature and grace. Most of us performed the good luck custom of tossing coins into the fountain hoping for good fortune to come.

After an amazing lunch at a local restaurant (I had a terrific bruschetta followed by a wonderful cannelloni) we took a bus out of town to visit one of the ancient Christian catacombs. On our way we stopped at the Circus Maximus and took in the sights. If you didn’t know it was there it would be hard to tell what it was. I was glad to have our amazing guide Jill there to explain what we were seeing. It does definitely not look like the great stadiums of Ben Hur, but it is still mightily impressive. We then arrived at the Catacombs of St Domitilla. They were both somber and a little creepy to some, but they were extremely interesting to see how the first followers of Christ interred their remains. We lucked out on the weather as the worst of it came while we were underground. After a long day we returned home and broke off for dinner on our own. It was another jam packed, fascinating day and I can’t wait for what the future days hold.