Rome the eighth

I like that the ultimate church I visited in Italy is also the ultimate church. Now I just have to stay out of churches for the next day and a half so I don't make a liar out of myself.

So, St Peters. Complete with searchlights from the eyeballs of God himself, seeking out the wicked and giving them nasty sunburn.

Up into the dome. Impossible to properly appreciate without a Go-Go-Gadget neck.

Assorted St Petersness.

So there's that, Michelangelo's Mary of the Giant Lap, also known as the Pieta. Some guy back in the seventies tried to kill it with a hammer, so now it's way up in the very back of a closed-off alcove and behind a wall of bulletproof glass. You know what else could have prevented another such attack? Putting it slightly beyond arm's reach.

According to my guidebook, this is the Holy Spirit. So now I know who to blame for leaving that mess on the windscreen of my car.

I stared at this for ages thinking "Is this actual pope remains? I'm pretty sure it's not actual pope remains. I think it's just a sculpture." IT IS ACTUAL POPE REMAINS. His face and hands have been silvered, to keep him in showroom condition. Catholicism, why you gotta be so weird? Anyway, I like his pope slippers.

Flower stall in the Campo dei Fiori market. The fruit and vegetables here were like, whoa. Everything was so bright and perfect. I like asparagus and all, but I've never marked out for asparagus before. 

This is the Area Sacra, kind of a sunken square of ruined temples. It was only excavated in the 1920s and I think some haphazard reconstruction was attempted, because those are definitely not the original steps or floors. If this is what they think it is, then it's probably where Julius Caesar was assassinated. Beware the Ides of March! They're lurking behind that column there!

I made a point of remembering where this was so I could look it up later, but it's not marked on any map. Maybe they just don't know what it is, or maybe it's just not important. I mean, not everything that survived has got to be sacred this and triumphal that; surely some of it's just sandal shops and used chariot dealerships.