Vittorio Emanuele and Mary Churches

It's been a couple days since I've posted, and in the interim I've been able to visit a couple churches. Yesterday, we went looking for the Crypto Balbi. It's a privately owned museum by Trevi Fountain that's situated on a first century AD theater. Apparently it's easy to see the archaeological stratification: over time, the city built and rebuilt over itself and so the change over time is clearly evident. We couldn't find the place, even though I'd personally walked by it like a week ago. The plan is to go back there next week with some of the archaeology students; that will be great because they have an in-depth understanding of the things we'll be seeing.

Instead, my buddy John and I went through the Vittorio Emaneule II monument. He was a 19th century king of Italy. The monument is big, ugly, gaudy and super nationalistic. I've never been a big fan of monuments for the sole purpose of showing how powerful a country is, but this one is just over the top. I mean, come on, it has an altar "to the State", right under the huge statue of Vittorio riding a horse. The one thing I did like about the monument was that it has a very respectful tomb to the unknown soldier, which is accompanied by twin flames that are always burning. The actual body in the tomb was picked by Maria Bergamas, a woman who lost her only son in WWI.

We then headed to Ara Coeli. It's located right behind the monument and is a church dedicated to Mary, Queen of Heaven (Regina Coeli). The Ara Coeli is the home to a really interesting relic called the "Bambino". It's a woodern statue of the Christ child which was made by a Franciscan friar in Israel. On his journey back to Italy, it is said that the ship got into some bad weather and it had to be jettisoned. It miraculously floated to shore safely; other tales included it being stolen and somehow getting back to its home church on its own. Because of these things, they adorned this baby with gifts. Its wooden face is shown, but the rest of the body is completely covered in gold and jewels. Il Bambino has more necklaces of bling than Puff Daddy at the Video Music Awards.

After that, we headed to the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. It's the third of the four basilicas of Rome I've seen; I still need to get to St. Paul. Maria Maggiore was pretty impressive; it's unique in that it's very well decorated on both the front and back side. Either could be a very worthy entrance to any other church. The insides are very cool too, lots of religious iconography having to do with the life of the Virgin . The crypt has some pretty famous people buried there: the sculptor Bernini, St. Jerome (author of the Vulgate Bible), popes. The founder of the Jesuit order, St. Ignatius of Loyola, celbrated his first Mass there. We stopped by the museum the have in the basement and got to see all the ancient trappings of a Catholic Mass: huge golden candelabras, vestments sewn in complicated fashions, architectural drawings of the church, and bejeweled Bibles.

Overall, it was a pretty good experience. Class is running pretty smoothly now that we have two pretty experienced people taking over for Reggie. It's good to get back in the swing of things; gotta do some work before I head down to Nashville!