Castle of the Holy Angel

Thursday, May 29, 2014

Breakfast for three days straight was home made spaghetti aglio e olio (garlic and olive oil) loving prepared by Linda. For people who are mostly Paleo in our everyday lives, Ari and I sure are carb fiends when we let it all go! Being on holidays is the best :) 

Buon appetito!

We continued our walking adventures of Rome to the Castle of the Holy Angel (Castel Sant'Angelo) which originally was a tomb turned fortress then turned castle in the 14th century and now finally a museum.

Palace of Justice, on the the way to the castle.

 Sheepishly I will admit that at the time we took this picture we didn't realise that this was actually St. Peters Basilica. It's only the biggest church and arguably the most holiest Catholic site in the world...

Ari makes St. Peters Church look not so big.

Ari outside the castle.

The majority of the museum collection did not permit photography, so we only have pictures of exterior statues and the view from the top. Most of the interesting works were the wall and ceiling paintings or frescoes depicting mainly religious subjects.

What's a holiday blog post without pictures of us eating something :)

View of Rome.

Linda checking out St. Peter's Basilica.

Still working on the perfect selfie - though I'm sure it's not a selfie if there's two of us right?

More of Rome.

Angel statue on the top of Castel Sant'Angelo.

I think one of the most impressive things was how fortified the castle was but I suppose given it was intentionally built up from a tomb to fortress it makes sense. There were plenty of canons as well as sniper vantage points all the way around the perimeter, every meter was an alternating angled sniper hole. Another fun fact, the castle is featured in Assassin's Creed for you gaming enthusiasts. 

And St. Peter's in the distance again.

Here's us giving our tired feet a break at the top of the castle.

And here's another angel statue.

You guessed it, another angel statue out the front of Castel Sant'Angelo.

Here's us on the other side of the river.

We left the castle and headed to Museum of the Ara Pacis where there was an Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art exhibition featuring works from Manet, Monet, Renoir, Cezanne, and Van Gogh to name a few. We really tried to make the most of being in such a historically significant and culturally rich country, as exhausting as this quest was.

Gothic style church.

Here's us outside the museum.

 The museum was specially built to house the Altar of Augustan Peace dedicated to Pax, the Roman goddess of peace.

Intricately sculpted marble, not all of the temple has been successfully recovered.

After the museum it was well and truly dinner time, another huge day in Rome done and dusted yet so much more to see and do!

Here's to realising we've been mispronouncing the humble bruschetta incorrectly our whole lives. It sound more like "brew-scet-tah", there's no "che" sound in the middle.

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