During our final week in Rome we largely took it easy, but did venture to a few of the remaining places that were on the list to visit.
Museo e Galleria Borghese is perhaps the most well-known art gallery in Rome. The gallery is housed in Villa Borghese, constructed in the early 1600s, about the same time that Cardinal Scipione Borghese began collecting works of art. His collection became the core of the museum.
Today the Villa holds paintings (generally from the 1400s-1600s, including those by Caravaggio, Titian, and Raphael), sculptures (by Bernini and others), and mosaics. Sculptures and mosaics are on display on the first floor, while the paintings are on the second floor.
I’d describe all of the works as excellent, but again not quite our preference. The bookshop and café are on the ground floor, which you will walk by on your way in and out. We spent a bit over an hour in the museum, and it was well worth the visit.
Tickets are sold online (€17 each) for a specific date and time. Plan on buying tickets at least several days in advance to ensure availability. We first tried to buy same day tickets on a Saturday, but the museum was sold out. So we bought tickets for one day the following week.
To get to Galleria Borghese, we rode the metro to the Flaminio station and then walked about half an hour through Villa Borghese, a large urban park.
The park is home to several museums, gardens, cafés, and Bioparco di Roma (the zoo), in addition to walking and jogging trails, fields, playgrounds, bikers, food stands, fountains, statues, and Terrazza del Pincio (a terrace overlooking Piazza del Popolo, a great place for sunsets). Needless to say, the park is a very popular place.
The Spanish Steps are not far from Villa Borghese, so we headed there next. Beautiful staircase, quite a few police, and a zillion tourists.
After surveying the scene, Stephanie looked at me and said: “Nice steps. What’s the big deal?” Yep. The steps are nice and definitely worth walking by, but perhaps overrated in reputation.
Trinità dei Monti, a small church, is at the top of the steps. Definitely a nice place to pop in for a few minutes after fighting the crowds around the steps.
We visited one other art gallery in Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj. Tickets were €15 each and, at the time of our visit, there were maybe five or six other people also in attendance. I think we spent about 40 minutes in the gallery, which is not a lot of time.
Overall we have mixed feelings about this gallery. Neither quantity nor quality is an issue. Hundreds of paintings (mostly from the 1500s and 1600s) are on display. Unfortunately the paintings are crammed together floor to ceiling up twenty-foot high walls. It’s hard to look at paintings while craning your neck near straight up. I guess we only actually looked at about half the paintings simply because we got tired of looking up.
Every trip has a couple of places that fall onto the “we did it but could have skipped it list”. For us, Galleria Doria Pamphilj was one of those.
Stephanie likes to go to Atlas Obscura to find different and unusual things to do in each city. Chiesa di Sant’ Ignazio di Loyola is one of those things as it is known for having a fake dome. The area where you would expect to see a dome is painted to appear as a (very dark) dome when you first walk in. In fact, I told Stephanie it looked like a thick black mesh was placed across the dome. The optical illusion becomes apparent as you walk farther inside.
We walked in, around a long line waiting to view the beautiful frescoed ceiling via a large tilted mirror placed in the center, and smack into dozens of kids with notebooks in hand. I swear March must be field trip month as there are packs of kids everywhere. Several times during our short visit someone got on a microphone to hush the somewhat loud murmurs of the crowd.
What’s more frustrating to deal with … slowly moving packs of tour groups, mostly elderly, or oblivious school groups? I’m not really sure. Both are *@$&% to impatient people like us.
Another Atlas Obscura find was the Bocca della Verità, i.e. the Mouth of Truth. A large stone carving, supposedly it will bite the hand off liars. So naturally we arrived to find a line of tourists waiting to get a picture with a hand inside its mouth. No one had a hand bitten off. I guess the stone stopped working some centuries ago because I’m pretty sure you will find at least one liar in random sampling of 20 people.
The Mouth of Truth is located at the entrance to the Basilica Santa Maria in Cosmedin. After you pose for a photo with the Mouth of Truth, the exit is through the church (though I suppose you can just turn around and go against the line to leave instead of walking through the church). If you are in the area, it is worth a short detour to see.
After leaving the Mouth of Truth we made a short walk up the hill to Parco Savello / Giardino degli Aranci (the orange garden), which has a beautiful view over the city. We hoped to be there for a colorful sunset, but the weather did not cooperate. Nevertheless the view is worth the trek to this park.
After a thoroughly enjoyable trip to Italy, it is time to return to Memphis for a bit. Instead of taking a 30 km/18 mile taxi ride to the airport (at a flat fee of €50), we are taking the metro to Roma Termini to catch the Leonardo Express, a dedicated train running to and from Aeroporto Internazionale Leonard da Vinci in Fiumicino (FCO).
Tickets for the Leonardo Express (€14 each) can be purchased at one of the dozens of Trenitalia ticket machines at the entry to Termini. With a ticket in hand (make sure you validate it), follow the signs to the far right side of the train station to a dedicated platform. The Leonardo Express runs several times each hour, delivering you to the parking garage across the street from the airport terminal.
After the ballpark 35 minute train ride, you have a five minute stroll along several moving walkways and across a covered bridge over the street. Once inside the terminal, it was smooth sailing for the check in process and going through security and passport control. We had plenty of time to drop into to the airport lounge for breakfast before going home.
Garrett and Stephanie
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