ROMA, GIORNA 4

 The weather in Rome was wonderful until our last day, in which it rained almost the entire day. Unfortunately the tour we took today was all outside, so I don't have as many pictures as usual. It's even more unfortunate because this was a fantastic tour through the baroque period in Italy.

Regardless, our tour guide was amazing, and it was an incredibly informative and all around awesome tour. 

So we met up with our guide at the first stop of our tour, Palazzo Navona (you can see him and and Eugenio above). For those of you new to the Piazza Navona, it's the former stadium of Domitian. Then it basically because the piazza for the Pamphili family to show off their wealth and familial connections to the Pope of the time. Anyways, it turned out to produce a beautiful square, and we got the Fountain of the Four Rivers out of it.

After the Piazza, we headed over to Sant'Ivo all Sapienza, which is a chapel that was built for the University of Rome at essentially the beginning of the Renaissance by Borromini.

You can start to get a sense of how ornamentation is a major thing in the Renaissance, although this one isn't as fully "decorated" as one would think of Renaissance architecture. It's lacking color for one thing, but Borromini meant for this to be paint while as it is, and it's still incredibly stunning.

Even the courtyard is stunningly designed, casually slipping in the patrons coat of arms.

Later in the tour we ended up behind the chapel, allowing us to have a fantastic view of the spiral at the top of the dome. Now that spiral is definitely Renaissance, no doubt about it.

Our next stop, before our coffee break (our guide was cute like that), was the Pantheon. I had been there once before in the week, but this time it was earlier in the day and we were with a guide, so it was a totally different experience. I don't have any good photographs from the outside because of two reasons. The first is that this structure is so large in comparison to the surrounding area that there's no way I can get a remotely good picture of the entire thing. And the second reason is the vastly large amount of tourists everywhere that ruin every shot. Though I shouldn't berrade them too much since I'm one too.

Either way I came out with some great shots of the dome, which is the best part of the Pantheon anyways (in my opinion!). For those who don't know, it's a concrete dome with an open oculus at the top. The oculus not only lets natural light into this very dense space, but it also acts as a sun dial, which you can see in the picture above.

Our next stop was to see the obelisk at Santa Maria Sopra Minerva. This obelisk was originally designed to be hollow between the elephants legs, but the patrons thought that the weight of the obelisk would definitely crush the base, and thus made him create a completely solid base. This incident is probably what really motivated him to create the Fountain of the Four Rivers with such a dramatic opening in the base.

Just for fun, here is the inside of that church (although we didn't really learn about it).

Our next stop, St. Ignatius Church, is possibly one of my favorites from that day. When you walk in you see this roof.

But when you step on a circular stone on the floor this is the view you get. This enormous perspective seen deserves a lot of respect and awe.

The same painter that did the fresco I just showed you, also painted the dome.

Except when you get closer to the dome, you can also see that it is a fake!

This was a laugh out loud moment, especially after all of the amazing domes I've stood under and take pictures of. This one is a flat roof simply painted to look magnificent. I can't even comprehend the skills that it would take to pull something like this off.

After the church, we headed over to the oh-so-famous Trevi fountain. Though spectacularly gorgeous, it was the most tourist-packed place I had been to yet, so I really only got a few good shots for it, and it was hard for our guide to tell us much in such a crowded space.

After whoever wanted to threw their coins in the fountain (a tradition that supposedly will bring you back to Rome again), we headed to our final destination with our guide, the Spanish Steps.

A quick last stop, and it was our lunch break. Yes, we did all of that before lunch.

Our afternoon was a bit less packed. We all met up after lunch and headed to the Ara Pacis Museum.

This museum is quite the controversial one in Rome. It was one of the first modern buildings built in the center of the city since the 30's, and it's quite a large structure to hold just one artifact. But the biggest concern to people is the belief that it doesn't pay attention to its context and so it blocks the views of the neighboring church.

I won't get into whether or not I agree with those statements, because I still have yet to draw a definite conclusion, and I think that it's a serious issue for an architect to face since we spend so much time studying the site, and putting our models into site models and walking around and around them. Regardless, the interior of the building is gorgeous!

Fun fact, I saw this water feature in the stairs and how successful it was and kicked myself a little because I had designed one in my last project, but took it out. It just looks so amazing!

Anyways, let's get back on topic. After the Ara Pacis, our small time to catch our breath, we had to head to the hotel to pick up our luggage and meet the bus so that we could make it to the train station and head home. 

Fortunately we didn't arrive home too late, but unfortunately that means that we arrived home and promptly headed to studio to catch up on the work we successfully (or unsuccessfully depending on how you look at it) avoided while in Rome.

It was an incredibly busy couple of days after that with our final precedent studies due, plus the 7 analytic and in-depth sketches from the Rome trip due right after that. And then I was in charge of 16 other students during our appointment to get our Italian stay-permits. I've finally just gotten a chance to catch my breath and actually sleep, so that you all for bearing with my very delayed updates on Rome and life in general!