Walking Tour of Rome

Well today was another interesting, and historic day.  We met up with our tour guides, Ashley and John.  I knew that Ashley looked and sounded so familiar to me.  Sure enough, she was my cousin (Fr. Jim Schmitz) and my tour guide when at the Vatican Museum about a year or so ago.  Small world!

We began our walking tour just outside the senate building at the Piazza Navona.  Around the corner is a place called Piazza Eustachio.  Interestingly enough St. Eustachio is the patron saint of hunters. Notice the cross with the antlers at the top of the church.  This is the image you see on a bottle of Jaegermeister.

As you may know, the Italians love their espresso.  Ironically it was only invented in the late 1800's so it's a relatively new phenomenon.  This place San Eustachio Cafe is, supposedly, the best coffee house in the city.  Here we learned that most Italians do not drink cappuchino after 11:00 a.m.  They consider it too sweet and milky - almost dessert like - and it's what you would normally think of as a breakfast beverage.  Nonetheless, many of the priests enjoyed a cup of espresso or cappuchino here to get us energized for the walk ahead.

Santa Maria Sopra Minerva is a Dominican Church and it's the only gothic church in Rome.  Built in the year 1286 when the papacy was in Avignon, the Dominicans were able to keep raising funds to build the church.  It is breathgaking with lapsis (blue) ceilings and marble pillars. St. Catherine of Siena's body is entombed just below the main altar.  She is heralded in helping to reunite the papacy in a single place - in Rome.  When it came to who would repose her body there was a dispute between the Siennese and the Romans.  They compromised and decided her body would be in Rome, her head and finger would be in Siena.  Only in Italy :).

Bernini's design

The Elephant signaling to Fr. Paglia

One of the most unusual aspects of this church is encountered in the piazza just outside.  There stands a huge obelisk with an elephant holding it up.  Bernini was commissioned to complete this work and had recently been inspired by a book he was reading.  In 1665 a small obelisk was found in Rome.  It was one of many Egyptian spires that once decorated a pagan temple here in Rome.   Pope Alexander VII decided to have it placed in front of the church and hired architects to design a monument.  One of the architects was a Dominican priest by the name of Father Domenico Paglia.  There was some level of dispute between the priest and the sculptor, Lorenzo Bernini.  The pope chose Bernini's design because the elephant symbolized strength and fortitude.  Fr. Domenico and Bernini disagreed with some of the elements of the design and, in protest, Bernini pointed the tail of the animal towards the Dominican monastery as a sign of his protest in altering the original design!

Michaelangelo's sculpture of Christ the Redeemer stands at the left of the sanctuary.  He had found a very small grey vain in the marble and completely abandoned the project once begun.  His students picked up where he left off (he was a perfectionist) and completed the work.  The body of St. Catherine of Siena lies in this church just under the main altar. Interestingly the present sacristy is a place where Galileo was tried in 1633.

San Ignazio (St. Ignatius) Church is a remarkable place as well.  Back in the days of the Enlightenment, people believed if you couldn't see it, you

shouldn't believe it.  The architect of this infamous church wanted to prove they were wrong.  Sometimes what we see isn't the whole picture; isn't the whole reality and he set out to prove it through the architecture and the decoration of this church.  Despite the fact that the church has only a slightly curved ceiling, the figures appear three dimensional, depending on where you stand.  Further, the dome of the church  appears similar to the dome of the Pantheon but it is, completely, an optical illusion.  Standing near the door of the church it appears 3 dimensional.  However, standing directly above the center and you'll see the dome is only painted on and is, in fact, not in the center of the church.  Amazing!