Last few days

Inside S Peters

Views of the dome and from the dome

The Spanish Steps in Spring

Castel S'Angelo - old mausoleum and fortress

My favorite pizza place -in Campo dei Fiori

Flower and fruit stands at the morning market in Campo dei Fiori

Ancient ruins that are now a cat sanctuary - very near studio so I passed it all the time

Probably my favorite fountain and street (right next to each other and both close to studio). The street had a lot of great art galleries and restoration shops

Portico d'Ottavia - I saw these everyday on my walk to class - the Portico used to house two temples inside of it

These last images are of S Ivo. It was one of the churches I was looking forward to seeing the most and it took me until the last week to make it. It was designed by Borromini (marker above from a different church) who designed many of my favorite spaces in Rome.

Well, I have only two days left in Rome. Studio is over and I have had a lot of free time these last few days to go out and revisit different parts of Rome and finally visit S Peter's dome. These are some of the photos I took recently and will probably be the final posts for my semester. Thanks to everyone who read and commented on my blog and I hope it was enjoyable. If anything exciting happens to me this summer (haha) I will try to blog about it and keep this site going. Ciao.

Easter Sunday - Hanging with the Pope

The Vatican at around 6 in the morning

This was the line to get into the Vatican - we were pretty close to the front

The Pope actually wasn't this far away it's just that my zoom on my camera is worse than the naked eye

For the times I couldn't see because of umbrellas I had a giant screen to look at

A group of us from class got up extra early on Sunday morning to get seats for the Easter Mass at the Vatican. It was the second time I saw the Pope is three days with the other being Good Friday near the Colliseum. We got there in plenty of time and were able to get seats. Unfortunately it rained quite a bit so the seats weren't too useful. S Peter's Square was really full with people from all over the world and the Pope gave a blessing at the end of the mass in a lot of different languages.

Tivoli

About a week after the Castelli Romani I took another day trip Tivoli with my friends Jin and Hannah. Tivoli is a small town just outside of Rome and is most famous for its views out over the Roman countryside and for Villa d'Este. The Villa d'Este is a Renaissance Palace built for a Cardinal and is known for its gardens (which seems like every Italian Villa).

Castelli Romani

This was the coolest meat shop I have ever seen

The last city we stopped at was Genzano di Roma, a small city with delicious strawberries and amazing views to the crater lake below. We walked around a little bit and really just enjoyed the small city - it was definitely my favorite part of the day.





After Castle Gandolfo we went to a different town, Frascati, to see Vlla Aldobrandini. The building took us a while to find and wasn't too interesting (and under repairs) but the water feature in the gardens behind the Villa were very interesting. They reminded me of Villa Lante that we visited earlier in the semester.







One of the Fridays after break we had the opportunity to go on a day trip with the class. We had a few options for day trips and I decided to go with a group to the Castelli Romani. The Castelli Romani are a group of old towns on the hills/mountains outside of Rome. The first place we stopped at was Castle Gandolfo which is still the summer residence of the Pope. The gardens there were really nice and there were great views over the landscape and lake in the mountains.