Get Ready for Rome

This short Mini Pod makes five points based on a recent trip to Rome and towns in northern Italy.

In this second report on my return from three weeks in Italy, I consider some evidence suggesting Rome is as postmodern as it is modern.

Today we venture beyond the central core of Rome to survey the most important sites on Rome's periphery.

I've just returned from a three-week trip to Italy, and I here begin a retrospective look at our travels, which were not much affected by COVID.

Today we survey the main sites to visit in Trastevere and in the area around the Vatican, an important step in preparing for a visit.

Centered on the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, the Campus Martius is for good reason Rome's most popular zone. Today we note its main sites to visit.

Today we review the sites on the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline Hills, which are not so much hills as ridges that meet in the area of the Termini Train Station. They offer a rich mix of Ancient, Christian, and Modern monuments.

Today we inventory the main sites in the area near the Capitoline Hill, including the Forum and the Colosseum. This is an essential first step toward choosing what is most important to visit in this zone of Rome.

I offer here a few thoughts on how to plan a visit to Rome, from places to stay to the need to decide what sites you want to visit.

Having a big picture in mind helps you find your way around Rome. I offer one here consisting of a Fixed Point, Four Roads, and Five Zones.  

We return to the Hall of Constantine, one of the four Raphael Rooms in the Vatican Museums. Its main frescoes show crucial episodes in the life of the Emperor Constantine, but did they ever happen?

After an overview of the three Raphael Rooms that followed the Stanza della Segnatura, we focus today on the Hall or Sala of Constantine, the first Christian Emperor.

We devoted a couple of Mini Pods to the greatest of the Raphael Rooms, but what about the others? This overview should help get us ready for the Room of Constantine, coming up next.

Raphael's famous "School of Athens" is in the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican, but what else is in this room, and are its several parts brought into a harmonious whole?

While the beauty of Raphael's School of Athens is widely appreciated, we today probe the controversial idea behind it.

The Vatican Museums can boast the world's most beautiful frescoes, but just what is a fresco?

We begin our look inside the Vatican Museums with an introduction to the deservedly most famous fresco of the four Raphael Rooms. In the background, I wonder whether modern universities are still moved by the ideal it represents.

Friars are not monks, and the Catholic Church includes many different sub-groups or orders. Does this matter?

The Warrior Pope was also the first patron of the Vatican Museums. Why would a pope want to make public the nude statues of pagan artists and the books of pagan thinkers?

We here take a quick look at the moral questions raised by Pope Julius II's outrageous conduct.

We make a second trip to the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains, this time to focus on Michelangelo's sculpted Funeral Monument to Pope Julius II.

This Mini Pod reviews the big questions that always lurk in the background of this podcast series and also introduces a new interactive map.

We today review the conflicts that divide Ancient, Christian, and Modern Rome, with special attention to the various monuments used by Modern Rome in its struggle to bury the Rome of the Popes. Can we find, notwithstanding these many quarrels, something identifiable as Western Civilization?

We move from one basilica devoted to St. Peter to another, and this one requires that we get to know better the greatest sculptor of the Renaissance and a pope who wore armor into battle and also promoted the finest art of the Roman Renaissance.

Today we investigate two tombs under St. Peter's Basilica, one of a saint, the other of a sinner, or so at least the saint would say. But this sinner defends himself.