Our last day is going to be dedicated to visit the most relevant
squares in Rome and the places we still have pending from the previous
days.
Our itinerary starts at “Flaminio” metro station
and ends coming back to the hotel to pick up our baggage and going to
the airport to board in our return flight to home at 9:30 PM.
the spots marked in the itinerary on the image are:
1- Popolo Square
2- Espagna Square
3- Fontana di Trevi
4- Colonna Square
5- Sant'Ignazio Church
6- Pantheon
7- Navona Square
8- Castel Sant'Angelo
9- Cavour Square
Después
We must check out this morning and have no rushes
for leaving the hotel so, although we start today at “Flaminio” metro
station, just 4 stops from ours, we are there some minutes past 11:30
AM.
Once out in the street we can see the gate to
Villa Borghese, a large park in the city, and Popolo’s Gate takes our
attention across the road. It is what remains from the ancient Augustus
walls, and we must walk through it to our first square today: Piazza
dei Popolo.
The square is a large space bordered by art masterpieces. At
North we have the already mentioned Popolo’s Gate and one church, at
both sides there is a wall with a white fountain in the middle with
statues. Left side is most beautiful, though, due to having a staircase
at bottom decorated with the vegetation from the park around.
In front stand out a couple of twin churches:
Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria in Montesanto. There is also
an Egyptian obelisk in the center of the square known as “Obleisco
Flaminio”.
Via del Corso is between the twin churches and is the street
we take to walk down and we only leave it for following a sign to
Mausoleum of Augustus.
When we arrive to the monument we can barely see
something from it and walk around until being able of taking a picture
of it. It’s quite disappointing as it looks great from satellite as can
be seen in the image above, at the beginning of this page, making a
triangle with numbers 1 and 2.
We leave the place as we’re not here for it but for what is
in
the opposite side: at the end of a street we can appreciate the famous
Piazza di Espagna (Spain’s Square).
This street is Via dei Condotti and is full of stores with the most
famous brands of fashion. I can even take a photo with a formula 1
Ferrari’s car and we also see a Christmas tree from Mercedes.
The square Piazza di Espagna appears quite crowded. There are
some fences around the fountain for unknown reasons. We can see in
front of us the popular staircase up to the Church of Trinita dei
Monti. There is a Christmas tree in the middle of the stairs and an
obelisk behind. They’ve also set a big nativity scene.
We climb to it to check its real size: the house
can be three meters in its highest point for figures half a meter tall.
This is an extra for visiting Rome on these dates:
streets are decorated for Christmas in a way only the capital city of
this worship can do.
We have in front another walk to the next visit, one we’ve
already been at our first day, and we get into the narrow streets of
the center of Rome to admire the Fontana di Trevi under a soft rain.
Once in this city center the visits are coming following each
other, we immediately reach Sant’Ignazio Church, which façade we
already saw that first day, but today we’re going inside to be amazed
by its beautiful painted ceilings, Sistine Chapel style.
A magnificent interior which cannot be guessed
from the façade integrated in the buildings.
Some steps from it the short distance between the
walls at boths sides of the streets is broken by a huge open space
which corresponds to two squares, one besides the other: Piazza Colonna
and Piazza di Motecitorio.
Piazza Colonna (Column’s Square) has the beautiful
column raising the statue of Adrianus to the sky and Piazza di
Montecitorio has an obelisk in front of Montecitorio Palace, which
gives its name to the square.
Our next short walk through the narrowest streets
of this city takes us to the Pantheon.
The old buildings bordering this square are just
the environment for the classic beauty of the Pantheon, a building from
Augustus period appearing incredibly complete. It really looks older
than the fountain in the square with another more obelisk and even the
cobbles making the floor of all this area of Rome.
The interior gets light from a circled hole in the ceiling
which is letting fall intermittently the small rain drops keep falling
during the whole day. It is beautiful inside, although of a different
kind than the churches and basilicas we’ve been visiting along this
travel. A more sober kind of it.
Another walk on these paving streets takes us to
Navona Square which, as it is located where the ancient Roman
Hippodrome where the chariot races took place, is shaped long and
narrow. We can see the fountains and the reiterated obelisk, but now is
also occupied by a Christmas market and a festival.
It’s some minutes to 2 PM and we should be
choosing a place for lunching. There are a lot of them in this square
but I want to finish with our list of squares with one is just some
meters down here where there is always a market: Campo di Fiori.
There we find the market is closing at this moment
and we can then label our list of visits as completed. So we end
getting into a restaurant in Piazza Farnese to rest for a while from
hours of walk.
With all our energies back we can start the return
trip. It takes us North to the river close to the known Castel
Sant’Angelo. We reach it by using the bridge one more time.
We enjoy the beauty of this bridge and the views
from it and go right of the Castel to Cavour Square, where this walk
must end.
It’s 5 PM and we’re looking for the transfer to
the hotel just as the driver explained to us last Friday, but we are
finally using our plan B: taking bus 990 from this place to our hotel.
It’s a long wait, but we are enjoyed the strange
behavior of the flocks of birds covering the sky. It looks like if they
were in a team dance competition in this place. I had never seen
something like this and I record this video as testimony of it:
When we are in the bus we’re aware this is the end of our
Roman adventure as we’re in the first step of our return trip to home.
The next is taking our baggage from the hotel, do that long metro trip
to Anagnina and, from there, a bus will take us to the airport.
Everything goes fine so far, but at the other side of the security
control we find the chaos: there are several delayed flights, -some
over 12 hours of delay - and the place is crowded with people lying at
floor. When I see our flight is delayed too I ask to the policemen in
the check for my chances of going out to the street for a cigarette.
I’m allowed to go out and even to coming back to my boarding gate with
any check here.
Finally we leave with 2 hours of
delay and thankful, as some of the flights with more delay time
accumulated were finally cancelled.
