Churches, Temples, Fountains and Piazze: Photos of the Historic Centre of Rome

In two previous sets of photos (here and here), I have covered the first two days of my two-week family holiday in Italy ? with a series of photos from Rome, where we have been during this first week, before moving on to Abruzzo province for the second.

Rome is so photogenic, and the compunction to wander around it so compelling, despite the average daytime heat of around 35 degrees, that it has been impossible to publish the photos as I take them, as a sort of visual diary, but if you bear with me I?ll eventually get all the photos published. At present, I doubt that Abruzzo province is as well-connected to the Internet as Rome, which may make a big difference to my ability to get my photos online.

On our third day in Rome, after a largely fruitless diversion in search of the Metro, we finally ended up in the Centro Storico, the historic centre of the eternal city (la citt? eterna), arriving at the Piazza del Popolo, the old northern entrance to the city, and visiting the Spanish Steps, the Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon, before returning home via Piazza Navona, the largest and most popular piazza in the Centro Storico.

As ever, the scale of the architecture remains overwhelming ? the churches that, every few streets, almost block out the light, so high are their facades, and their opulent interiors, in which every surface glitters or demonstrates Rome?s wealth in centuries past ? and the Catholic church?s ongoing wealth. As ever, the Roman people themselves were thoroughly welcoming and, as the Italians say, simpatici, wearing their city?s grand history lightly, with young people, in particular, as likely to enthuse as wildly about London and Scotland as they did when I used to visit northern Italy more than 20 years ago.

On this third day, while I admired how much ordinary Roman life remains centred on family and on tradition (in cuisine, for example, using local seasonal ingredients), as opposed to the magpie neurosis of modern Britain, where tradition and culture are largely treated as disposable, leading to an atomised society, I was also aware that the economic disasters engulfing Greece and Spain are also lapping at Italy?s shores, although there was little evidence of it in the streets of Rome. Instead, the city continued its tourist trade in a mostly relaxed manner, with the main interruption to this peaceful business coming from the policemen and policewomen placed strategically at the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain to blow whistles every time the tourists, oblivious to the rules, which were not posted anywhere, sat down in the wrong place or dared, as I did at the foot of The Spanish Steps, to put their hands in the water of the fountains, in an attempt to cool down.

Next up: Photos inside The Pantheon and from the roof of Il Vittoriano, the giant marble monster erected to mark Italian unification ? and the ambitious self-regard of the new nation ? which was completed in 1911, and which we visited prior to touring the great remains of Ancient Rome ? the Roman Forum, the Colosseum and the Palatine Hill.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guant?namo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America?s Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press, distributed by Macmillan in the US, and available from Amazon ? click on the following for the US and the UK) and of two other books: Stonehenge: Celebration and Subversion and The Battle of the Beanfield. To receive new articles in your inbox, please subscribe to my RSS feed ? and I can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Flickr (my photos) and YouTube. Also see my definitive Guant?namo prisoner list, updated in April 2012, ?The Complete Guant?namo Files,? a 70-part, million-word series drawing on files released by WikiLeaks in April 2011, and?details about the documentary film, ?Outside the Law: Stories from Guant?namo? (co-directed by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, and available on DVD here ? or here for the US). Also see my definitive Guant?namo habeas list and the chronological list of all my articles, and please also consider joining the new ?Close Guant?namo campaign,? and, if you appreciate my work, feel free to make a donation.

Source: http://www.andyworthington.co.uk/2012/08/19/churches-temples-fountains-and-piazze-photos-of-the-historic-centre-of-rome/

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