We eat on these trips. A lot. Happily, that is either countered by or caused by the miles of walking we do each day. Today we logged 13.5 miles. So far on the trip, we have walked 67.6 miles, and we still have one more day of touring to go. The accumulated miles made us all a little weary, and so tonight was an early night for us – back at the hotel by 9:00 pm.

It was an impressive art day. We started by taking the metro and (what else?) walking to the Borghese Gardens and the villa found therein. The gardens are huge, and simple but pretty. The villa is pleasant and tasteful on the outside, and is two stories tall. It happens to contain one of the best small art collections in the world, with multiple Bernini sculptures and three or four Caravaggio paintings, as well as other paintings by other masters and many ancient sculptures.

I happen to like both Caravaggio and Bernini, and I was very excited to see their works. The Borghese Museum limits the number of people allowed in the museum since the space is so small, and you can only stay for two hours. We grabbed an audio guide for a small fee, and that walked us through the major works in the museum in just about two hours (we could have used another ten minutes or so).

The museum did not disappoint. I had seen video shots of Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne, where Daphne is running from Apollo. who has more than dinner on his mind. She asks her father, a river god, to save her, and he turns her into a tree. Bernini sculpts that moment, and it is spectacular. I was familiar with it, but in person it is wonderful to be able to look closely at various details, like the feet taking root, or like Apollo’s fixed gaze on Daphne’s face. It is also nice to be able to walk around the work, so you can see it from different angles.

I expected to love that piece, but Bernini’s David was a complete surprise to me. He creates David in mid-throw of his sling stone – the body is tense and twisted, the sling is taught, and David’s face is screwed up in concentration and effort. I really loved it.

There were several other Bernini sculptures, and they were all excellent. I also enjoyed seeing the Caravaggio paintings, which included his version of David and Goliath, with Caravaggio’s own head serving as the model for Goliath’s severed head. The paintings were all created with realistic settings and people, which was new for religious paintings – even his secular paintings had touches of real life in them, such as blemishes on fruit.

The house itself is worth seeing too. The rooms were decorated with the art in mind, and so many of the rooms are lavish. Borghese was a cardinal and nephew to the Pope, and so he had a ton of power and very deep pockets. On the plus side, he loved art and wanted to showcase classical art alongside the new art in Rome, and he wanted the public to be able to see it. On the down side, he was ruthless in getting art that he wanted, including threatening prison for those who had paintings that he wanted. The way to get a papal pardon was to “donate” the art to the gallery. Yikes. What goes around comes around, as when Napoleon’s sister married into the family, and so Napoleon was able to “buy” many of the ancient works, at a deep family discount. The works are still in France at the Louvre to this day.

We left the museum around 1:00, and grabbed some lunch over at the square where the Spanish Steps are located, while Jacob ran to do some quick shopping. The square was a very pleasant place to eat lunch, and then we jumped back on the nearby metro to head over to the Vatican, to go to the Vatican Museums.

Props and praise to my well-planning wife, who had reserved tickets online for us. The line for normal tickets looked to be an hour long. As it was, even with reserved tickets, it took about ten minutes to get into the museum.

Meredith and I had been to the museum a little over twenty years ago. It has changed. A lot. The new museum had a dedication date of 1998, and so many of our memories of our last visit can no longer be confirmed. I’m not sure if it is a fault of the renovations moving people less efficiently or if there was an enormously larger number of people who were there today, but from the start of the museum all the way though eight or ten galleries, up to the contemporary art rooms, which are right before the Sistine Chapel, we were sardined into a most dense crowd. It was difficult to move in any direction without bumping into someone, and to stop in front of any work would have been hard. I was mostly interested in the rooms themselves, which are ornate, and I wanted to get to the modern art area.

I happen to love modern religious art. I think modern art, when focused on something grounded in a text like the Bible, excels at communicating emotion. It also can challenge the viewer to see a well-known story in a new light. The Vatican’s collection was very good in this way. I did not like everything I saw, but I did like much of it, and there were two or three very moving pieces.

We did make it to the Sistine Chapel, which was crowded, but there was room down one side and to the back. I like the chapel ceiling – it is a tremendous accomplishment. I also find it hard to look at since it is straight up, and also involves many stories, from the creation of the world though just before the birth of Jesus . So I actually prefer Michelangelo’s Last Judgment painting on the wall of the room. It is huge, but still easier to look at since it is not on the ceiling; plus, it is only telling one story, and that focus helps bring the epic nature of the work into my ability to comprehend it.

One funny thing happened in the chapel – a woman walked up next to me, took my arm, and asked me if the wall was not even more impressive from way back here at the back of the room. Startled, but polite, I agreed it was. She then asked me another question (I forget what it was), to which I agreed as well. At that point, she realized I was not her husband, and with a slight laugh and apology, she found him. Meredith saw the whole thing and said he did look a bit like me. I thought the whole thing was amusing.

That ended the art portion of the day, but not the walking. We left the museum, and walked a third of the way around to the front of St. Peter’s church. The others who had not seen it before were amazed at the size of it. We hung out there, exploring the portico and taking pictures, for fifteen or twenty minutes, before we walked over and then down alongside the Tiber River. We headed down to the Trastevere neighborhood, an area of tight streets, varied shops, and good restaurants. I picked out a restaurant based on the fact that they had a display of their house-made pasta, and it was a good pick. The waiter was very Italian, taking away my olive oil plate from me before I was done, claiming that if I had too much bread, I would never eat the pasta course. He also was reluctant to bring cheese over for Tim since it would spoil the pasta. He encouraged Tim to try the dish without the cheese, and never did bring any over. He was fun-loving and joking, but very serious about his food.

Regina and Meredith N. did some quick shopping in that area on our way out, and so we used the time to eat gelato (the streak continues). Our walk took us across the small island in the middle of the Tiber, and then over to the Circus Maximus, which I thought would be amazing, but turned out to be, for the most part, a really huge field. There were some ruins at the far end of the field, so that made me feel better. A couple of streets over we grabbed a metro and headed home. Tons of art and tons of walking. We were all tired.