Day 3, I think

Got nice and sunny today, a crispy spring day. Walked the dog and brought her back, then left for the morning, starting out with a church nearby that I knew would close at noon. Sant'Andrea della Valle is a nice baroque church with the second highest dome in Rome, designed by Carlo Rainaldi. Not much to say other than that, but I like each and every one of them for whatever they bring, on down to the tiny Santa Barbara chapel on the Giubbonari street where our house is, which is minute, but painted from top to bottom with faux marble, trompe l'oeil ornament, and little scenes. 

I almost had the feeling these guys were peering over my shoulder !

We then walked back past our place (notice how I've already adopted our hosts house to be our own?) to look at the exterior of the Palazzo Farnese, where they were filming some goofy looking artsy crap out in the Piazza. Had to laugh at their craft services table, which consisted of a plastic bin half full of dried up sandwiches on white bread and some box juices. Even a low budget film in LA knows actors are all about the food!

The back yard of the Palazzo Farnese looks out over the Tiber river and has a bridge that Michelangelo had planned to connect it to the Villa Farnesina on the far side of the river. It never got further than crossing the street.

Went into the Palazzo Spada next, where the famous disappearing perspective hallway by Borromini sits on the ground floor. Sorry, but if you want to see that, you'll have to Google it, since they were adamant about no pics. They were adamant about the inside too, but all the guards were either talking or snoozing, so i managed to catch a few good ones.Their collection is not very exciting, but the house is pretty cool and still has a bit of a "lived in" feeling to it, including a very nice citrus garden outside.

The exterior of the Palazzo Spada has fabulous stucco work all over 

After that we walked along the Via Giulia a ways, parallel to the Tiber, on a street with a lot of charm and a cool church with lots of skulls on its exterior. Went back to the pad for lunch, then went up to the Palazzo Venezia just across from the Emanuele monument. Another amazing staircase there, with different thematic capitals on all the pilasters, and again a mostly ho-hum collection of paintings, but again in a cool setting. Mussolini lived here for a while, and a couple of rooms were done up in the 30's with amazing iron and ceramic chandeliers. It also had cool majolica floors throughout, and no restrictions on photography. I've gotten in the habit of shooting before asking now, but it's nice when they really don't seem to care.

Strange but cool chandelier in the Palazzo Venezia. It's said that Mussolini used to meet his mistress in this room. 

Took in the museum of the Market of Trajan, which was kind of overpriced at 9.50 Euros, but it had some interesting info about, and fragments from, all the Imperial Fora, as well as great views from the parapets looking down on the forum built by Trajan. I love imagining the vast marble floored spaces that covered many acres of the Roman Forum, where it was mostly only foot traffic and definitely no machine noises, thought there could have been lots of hammering whenever they were constructing a new one for some emperor. After we exited we walked past all the spaces, with me trying to paint the picture for Marianne's eyes, while she struggled to stay awake!

"listen to husband? Fall asleep on this bench? Hmmm....."

Stopped off at the Church of the Gesu on the way home. Called the first Baroque church by historians, it has a ton of relics (arm bones, skulls under glass) and a gigantic gold, silver and lapis lazuli chapel dedicated to Saint Ignatius that was designed by Andrea Pozzo, master of perspective. The ceiling in the nave also has some really good trompe l'oeil effects of figures floating on clouds and seeming to enter the real space of the church. It was painted by Giovanni Battista Gaulli around 1670.

Gaulli's ceiling fresco really does seem to be floating off the structure of the building. 

Another gluten free pizza rounded out the day- I might get even fatter on this trip!

I'm going to need to go on a diet after this trip!