Topdeck Rome

Owen telling us about the Spanish Steps, in Rome.

Good luck! A day after this it was reported that some horrid person vandalised a part of the sculpture.

The Pantheon. There's lots of holes in the top triangle bit. Owen says there used to be lovely jewels and gold sculptures and all nice things but a man called the Pope thought "oh gee, those are nice, better have them then" and moved them all to the Vatican.

A sample of the sculptures on another church around the corner. Shows how the Catholic church felt about women......

Really amazing to see the difference in the height of the ancient city of Rome compared to now, Imagine how tall and imposing the Coliseum would have been then! Also, interesting to note, the ruins are all full of stray cats. They're protected in Rome.

At the Vatican City our guide is so full of beans she can't stand still at all. It's exhausting but more fun. She takes us to various parts of the museum, ending at the Sistine Chapel. A while back it was cleaned (before then it was pretty much black and white) and here's the kicker: the only reason you can't photograph the frescoes inside the Chapel is because the American TV network NBC paid to have it cleaned in return for the rights.....

This is an incomplete work by Leonardo Da Vinci. You can't tell in the photo, but there was a square cut out around the guy's head (it's painted on wood) and the square was found being used as a coaster and the rest found somewhere completely different as the lid of a trunk..with a square missing.. It was all put back together and landed here. Wonder how many more missing artworks are out there.

This is one of only 2 marble statues left which still has it's eyes painted. They're either painted directly on or have a thin film of glass over the marble which is painted. I'm really not sure why the eyes aren't put back on as part of the restoration of these types of sculptures around the world. It seems so much more effective with the detail there and a whole lot less creepy than blank, white eyeballs.

This shows 2 things: how incredibly ornate the decorations are in these buildings, and how incredibly busy it is. YUCK!!!

The Pope gives his addresses from the building behind me and masses of people gather in this space to see him wave.

Real pasta in Italy! It was delicious. Wish I could say the same for the pizza. Every time I tried pizza is was bland and terribly oily. The bases were better though.