Sightseeing in and around Rome

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica

Fiumicino is proving a great choice. Not only is it a lovely little fishing port with great restaurants it is also only a short bus and train ride into Rome. The bus stop is right outside the boatyard and the bar for the tickets is just over the road. Our first trip was to Ostia Antica, the ancient harbour of Rome. It is a large archaeological site close to Ostia originally founded in 620 BC. It soon became Rome's seaport situated at the mouth of the Tiber but due to silting now lies 3 km from the sea. It is a beautiful site, not dissimilar to Pompeii, with wonderfully preserved buildings and mosaics. For some reason, probably the distance from Rome, it doesn't attract hordes of visitors. This made wandering around the ancient warehouses, apartments, villas, shops, theatre and baths all the more pleasurable.

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica 

Ostia Antica 

Ostia Antica

Ostia Antica

Apollo Belvedere, marble

Laocoon and his sons, marble

From the sublime to the ridiculous. The first time we visited Rome we gave up on the Vatican museums due to the never ending queue. The second time the Pope resigned and the Sistine chapel was closed for the conclave. Third time lucky. We made our way into Rome and caught the metro to the Vatican. We joined the queue at lunchtime (we'd heard the tour groups are supposed to be gone by then - they weren't) and after an hour we reached the ticket office and parted with rather an excessive entrance fee. We'd both dressed appropriately having read about people being turned away at the last minute but all states of undress were being waved through. The museums were originally founded by Pope Julius II in the sixteenth century and display works from the huge collection acquired by the Catholic Church throughout the years. In 2013 the museums received 5.5 million visitors. It felt like they were all there at the same time as us. We picked up a guide map and began our tour of the 54 galleries. Despite not being a particularly pleasant experience due to the crowds we did finally get to see this extraordinary collection of treasures. We admired the famous ancient statues, Laocoon and his sons and the Apollo Belvedere in the Museo Pio-Clementino as well as works by Leonardo da Vinci, Giotto and Caravaggio in the Pinacoteca Vaticana. The Raphael rooms did not disappoint and of course we made it to the Sistine chapel and strained our necks looking up at Michelangelo's ceiling which took over four years to complete.

Raphael, Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple and The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila

Laocoon's head

Raphael, The School of Athens, 1509-1510

Ceiling of the crypt of the three skeletons

We had a couple of days off before venturing into the city again. This time we made our way to metro Barberini and the Church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. The church is most famous for its ossuary, known as the Capuchin crypt. It is a small space beneath the church comprising six rooms, five of which feature a unique display of human bones believed to have been taken from the bodies of 3,700 Capuchin friars who died between 1528 and 1870. In 1631 the friars left their old friary and arrived at the church bringing with them 300 cartloads of their deceased brothers. The bones were then decoratively arranged in the burial crypt. The soil in the crypt was brought from Jerusalem by order of Pope Urban VIII. As friars died the longest buried friar was exhumed to make room for the newly deceased who was buried without a coffin and the newly reclaimed bones were added to the decorative motifs. Bodies typically spent thirty years decomposing in the soil before being exhumed. We passed through the crypt of the three skeletons, the crypt of the leg and thigh bones, the crypt of the pelvises, the crypt of the skulls, the mass chapel and into the crypt of the resurrection. The Marquis de Sade visited the crypt in 1775 and wrote "I have never seen anything more striking". It was very weird yet beautiful at the same time.

Crypt of the skulls