St. John and Centro Storico

The last few days I've been doing some touristy stuff trying to see the city. I plan to visit all four of the basilicas in Rome; so far I've been to St. Peter's and St. John Lateran. St. Peter's, of course, is the ultimate basilica. It's immense, rich, and filled with tons of people at all times. St. John's is pretty impressive as well. On Thursday morning, my buddy John and I decided to go visit it instead of doing homework. It's the original papal seat and still holds that claim, even though St. Peter's is de facto more important these days. The church itself has some pretty old inscriptions on the inside; my favorite part was touring the Lateran Palace where the Lateran Pact was originally signed. This was a pact between Mussolini and the Vatican demarcating where each one held power, establishing the Vatican as a state, and pretty much giving the Church some sweet deals: until the 80s when it was resigned with the Italian socialists, the Church got free water, free garbage removal, and a yearly base charge for electricity. Priests also got some sort of stipend for saying prayers in all of the churches in Rome, even though the majority of the priests never did their duty and just took the money. The room in which they signed the pact has a nice little guestbook signed by Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Gasparri (the Pope didn't show up), as well as some other dignitaries from each side. The Palace had a bunch of ceiling decorations displaying Biblical stories and other scenes painted by a group of twelve painters. There was one room in which I'm pretty sure the painters either didn't know their Latin or just royally screwed up. The ceiling is supposed to show the four seasons: two of the seasons are depicted as an old man covering himself tightly with his cloak and a young woman surrounded by greenery. Now I'm no expert, but I think the old man signifies "winter" and the young woman "spring". Yet the old man was labelled "Ver" (Spring) and the woman "Hyems" (Winter). Guess even then people had problems with the language. I've included a picture of St. John's just as a reference: since I don't have a cord to upload my pictures, I'll have to upload them later. Maybe I'll do it as a one picture per day thing. We'll see.