Fast paced Rome for a few days. We found a sanctuary in our tiny boutique hotel located off of the Moses Fountain. It was very hard to find. Faded flat sign and this is the door. 
It turned out great! Only a few rooms and a patio where we ate breakfast.
Here is the breakfast view as of a beautiful church facade as the city woke up. Moses Fountain Hotel.
Because the church was right across the street and not famous at all, we didn’t think of it as a destination. We meandered over and saw this…
WOW Rome is full of surprises. The marble door was about 8″ thick rose colored and streaked with white an about 10 feet tall. It was carved out of a single piece of marble.
Cooled off and ready to wander down to the main attractions. Time to explore. Lots to see today.
Paletine hill was my favorite place on the planet. The place where Alexander built his mansion-palace. Now just ruin of terra cotta, once covered with white marble.
Imagining the white fortress on the hill and the power it exhaulted wasn’t hard. Just walking up to it was challenging.
We spent quiet time Imagining what this area looked like during Alexander’s time. We discussed the monumental amount of human beings that worked on these structures creating layers and layers of architecture.
The view from here is spectacular.
Water from the original aquifer still flows and is potable. Actually it is sweet and cold. We filled our bottles up many times from these free springs around Rome.
I was very disappointed with the Vatican museum. Well I think it was just because of the thousands of people moving through at once, like cattle. St Peter’s Basilica was jam packed and hot. However, the art the Catholic Church owns is magnificent and worth enough to feed the world several times over. Of course many thousands of people still pay to see the treasures so they are still profiting. The commercialism of the religion really annoyed me.
It took around two hours to complete the walk through the museum. Art, map rooms,mosaic flooring, gardens, painted and gilded ceilings, and Egyptian carvings,mummies and art to rival the Louvre. It is a wonder to see…
Oh and you can’t take a picture of Michelangelo’s “God and Adam” on the ceiling at all. There is a guard at the door yelling “NO PICTURES” in several languages as only the outer river of people (about 3 or 4 abreast) are moving in a circle around at least a thousand people standing in the center of the Basilica. Everyone is looking up, not moving, TAKING PICTURES and selfies with their I Phones.
I did not take a picture of the ceiling. This is me being good:
Lots of tiny cars and thousands of scooters fly by on every road. Crossing the cobbled streets is a challenge and feels like running through the ribbon at the end of a race when one reaches the opposite sidewalk.
We took the hop on hop off bus to the sights and were amazed how such large vehicles get around on the narrow streets.
The old and the new reside together. The cute little truck below opens turns into a snack bar.
I did find the picture of what our archaeologist guide called her “baby” . It is part of a horse statue she discovered and then uncovered below the Colosseum. She described the excitement and awe she felt as she brushed dirt away from the marble, revealing the statue’s parts, a leg, a rear flank of a horse.
We meandered down too the Trevi Fountain and had a gelato. Per tradition, we threw in our coin ensuring a return to Roma someday.
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