Roman Art and Architecture

The Palazzo Borghese. I was told by someone who knows that if you are a cleric in a cassock and galero, when you come out from dinner with the prince, the Carabinieri salute you.


A typical Roman street. Note the Madonella on the corner of the wall. Next time I go (please let it be soon!) I'll make a point of photographing as many of these as possible and doing a thing on them.


St. Peter's dome keeping a careful eye on the Savoy's bridge over the Tiber.


The bridge to the Castle of the Holy Angels is decorated with these Bernini angels carrying the instruments of the Passion.
I am told they are regularly vandalized. Anti-clericalism lives on.


No no...don't thank me...




Me and St. Peter; we're like that.


The Pope's residence with vendor. The Gypsies are a pain close to the Piazza.


A medieval tower close to Santo Spirito in Sassia (Holy Spirit in Saxony) is a 12th century basilica church in Vatican City. Wiki: "The church stands on the site of King Ine of Wessex's Schola Sacorum or Saxon School, a charitable institution for Saxon pilgrims. It was rebuilt in the 12th century." When we went in, it was full of people following along with the Divine Mercy chaplet. It is in the charge now of the St. Faustina nuns.

The baby wheel at Santo Spirito hospital, attached to the church. You can see that the place where one reaches in to turn the box is well worn.

Wiki again:

From 1198 the first foundling wheels (ruota dei trovatelli) were used in Italy; Pope Innocent III decreed that these should be installed in homes for foundlings so that women could leave their child in secret instead of killing them, as this practice was clearly evident in the River Tiber. A foundling wheel was a cylinder set upright in the outside wall of the building, rather like a revolving door. Mothers placed the child in the cylinder, turned it around so that the baby was inside the church, and then rang a bell to let people know what they had done. One example which can still be seen today is in the Santo Spirito hospital at the Vatican City; this wheel was installed in mediaeval times and used until the 19th century.

The parish church of St. Philip. Now a private home.


The Via Giulia. The only straight street in Rome. The bridge was designed by Micelangelo to reconnect the Farnese family to their garden when Pope Julius ran a street through their house.


The church of our Lady of Death. The home of a confraternity that went about the streets of Rome picking up the dead bodies of pilgrims and giving them Christian burials.






St. Barbara's church in the street of the book binders.


The new personal parish of the FSSP, Ss. Trinità dei Pellegrini. Went to the high Mass at San Gregorio for Pentecost. The True Rites of the Catholic Church certainly put you off being off religion.


The doors of the Pantheon. They're the original ancient Roman doors that are so huge and so heavy that the Roman engineers developed a new spring-loaded system to hang them. It is the best preserved of all Roman buildings.


An idea of the scale of the building. It is so huge that it was impossible to photograph it all in one picture with my little camera.