Weather wise, today was a miserable day! We decided to try to stay inside as much as possible and see some museums we had never visited before: the Capitoline Hill museums and the Doria Pamphili Gallery. We borrowed an umbrella from our host and set off across the Tiber early this morning. Our first stop was the Capitoline Hill museums, containing artifacts from ancient Rome: the bronze statue of the nursing she-wolf, symbol of Rome; fragments from a huge statue of Constantine; a gilded bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, emperor of Rome, etc. From there, we walked to the Doria Pamphili Gallery, which was the private home of the Doria Pamphili family, descendents of Pope Innocent X. While viewing all the beautiful paintings this family acquired (most of them during Pope Innocent's reign), one wonders how a priest of the church (who took vows of poverty) accumulated all this personal wealth.
After our museum tour, we had lunch at a small, typical Roman restaurant and then braved the weather again in the hopes of doing some shopping. All we did was get wetter and wetter as we tried to maneuver the narrow Roman sidewalks with thousands of other umbrella-clad people. Rich refused to use the umbrella's shelter, claiming that I was going to poke out his eye (honestly!!) and, in the process, got thoroughly wet. We finally decided to give it up and walked back to our hotel, keeping to the path along the tree-lined Tiber to escape the rain and the crowds. By the time we reached our destination we were both soaked through to the skin. Let's hope the weather tomorrow is a little better, as it will be our last day in Rome. Hope your Halloween was drier than ours.
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| Fragments from the Statue of Constantine |
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| View of the Roman Forum |
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