Today was my checking out day at the hostel. The front desk gentleman was the one who had been so kind to me when I first landed in Rome, and every single morning he had been professional and courteous. So I thanked him because he really made my stay special, and he seemed touched and shook my hand. What a nice guy. ðŸ˜
After one last delicious hostel breakfast:
I put my stuff in a locker for the day and headed to one of the gems of Rome, the galleria Borghese! This was a private art gallery created by the powerful Borghese family, and like the Vatican and other places of wealth and power, every inch was decorated lavishly to dizzying effect.
The Galleria Borghese is most famous for its Caravaggio and Leonardo da Vinci paintings, and especially its Bernini sculptures. It even had an unfinished sculpture, and it was so cool to see what his work looked like in a slightly unpolished state. It made his skill even more apparent.
Photo 1: I set a calendar reminder to buy Galleria Borghese tickets the second they opened, and I’m so glad I did. ðŸ˜
Photo 2: I love chiaroscuro.
Photo 3-5: The rooms sort of had themes. This was the girl power room. 😂
Photo 6: there were many rooms closed off for repairs or finishing touches that had SO MUCH MORE art.
Photo 8: here’s the Da Vinci. You can tell, right?
Photo 10: I wanted to try and give a sense of how sumptuous the setting was. Like, the sculpture is gorgeous, but it’s of a piece with the entire room.
Photo 11-14: These Bernini statues “move” as you walk around them. As you circle them, the narrative plays out and they really do seem to shift and flicker. This is most apparent with Apollo and Daphne, but all three Berninis do it. I don’t have video to illustrate this, but it’s mesmerizing.
Photo 17: like this one – it feels like you can feel the sling whipping as you walk around it. So this is a super sassy piece, because it’s David, but it’s very clearly referencing Michaelangelo’s more famous David. But, this is also a self portrait of the artist at 25. So it’s him boldly stating that he was challenging the older masters directly. The sass. I love Bernini, he was so messy.
Photos 18-19: The trials of Hercules! There was also a lot of ancient Roman statues and mosaics.
Photo 26: Look at this incredible use of different types of stone. I’ve never even thought about how it could be used to imitate life like this. Not only is it eye wateringly expensive, it’s also beautiful and creative. Art!!!!!
Photo 27-29: What up Caravaggio. Speaking of messy artists 😂 he was A Certified Mess and I love him too.
Photo 31: the unfinished Bernini, titled “the truth unveiled.” A tour guide said that it was important that the woman’s face doesn’t follow classical rules of beauty, because truth may not always be beautiful. But I think she has her own radiance, and that Bernini captured that is just amazing.
Photos 35-36: this is Canova, not Bernini, and it’s of the Borgia matriarch. Lady was so confident she put a hot naked statue of herself in her house. This is such a girlboss move.
After this, I noticed that you got a discount at a nearby modern art museum!
I LOVE modern art, so I decided to go find it…at a very lesiurely pace, because the park surrounding the Galleria Borghese was recommended by the walking tour I’d followed on earlier days of the trip, and it really was so pleasant. It was full of families and dogs and everyone was having such a nice time.
Photo 1: ~artistic. The colors on the poles are from everyone putting their Galleria Borghese stickers there.
Photo 2-3: the formal gardens of the galleria Borghese. I took these photos for my mom. Hi Mom.
Photos 5-6: In this one ramble, everyone was walking dogs off leash. And they all seemed well behaved, too. It was so good to see so many happy dogs. ðŸ˜
Photo 8: oh…this used to be a carousel, I bet. I love carousels, and I was sad I missed my chance to ride this one before it was replaced.
Throughout the city I’ve seen SPQR repeated on grates, walkways, and other municipal outcroppings. It’s an ancient, ancient logo, and it’s incredible that it’s still in active use today. Modern day corporations, eat your heart out.
After lots and lots of walking, it was time for lunch. I ate at a cafe in the park that was attached to an artsy movie theater, mostly because I saw this cake and Needed to have it.
I tried a new iron pill on this day and it wasn’t working out – my energy levels were seriously flagging. So I ordered beef meatballs to try and get some iron in me. OH, they were so good. Fried to a crisp, with juicy meat inside, pops of flaky salt, and with the parsley sauce for a clean, bright, herbal finish. My mouth is watering thinking about it again. ðŸ˜
Then it was time…..for cake. This was a ricotta and pistachio cream cake, with a little espresso. THIS CAKE. GUYS. I will dream of this cake for the rest of my life. The crumb so soft and blending with the ricotta and cream, it felt like eating a fluffy light cloud. The delicious sweetness undercut by the bitter espresso for the perfect balance. And the crust of the cake was crushed pistachio chunks for the perfect pistachio crunchy finish at the end of the cake. Absolutely perfect experience. I was genuinely so glad I had lived this long, so I could experience that perfect sweet. ðŸ˜
Happy inside and out, I wandered back into the park and found a monument to Goethe. It’s so expressive!
Then I finally made my way to the art museum. It had many beautiful pieces, not just what we’d consider modern (post wwi) but also back to impressionism, in the 1800s. Well….I guess in a city as old as Rome, that IS modern art. 😂
The special exhibit was for an Italian(?) modern art movement called Futurism. It started in the 1910s, when electricity, motion pictures, roller coasters, etc. all this was new. So the future was brilliantly lit and fast moving and thrilling. Futurism tried to capture that thrill – its focus was on capturing the feel of light and motion. It lasted through the 1960s-ish.
It was cool because it had some pieces from MoMA. They followed me. 😂 And the pieces in the early period of Futurism were beautiful and compelling.
But also, because it was an art movement in Italy during world war ii…Futurism gains fascist overtones around the 1940s. The exhibit gained a very specific nasty undertone around the airplane room, which made me sad because I love flying, and I would have loved it if not for that. There was a pretty specific and loud nationalism in this room and the art in this room that gave me the willies. It was especially sad because it’s clearly a modernist art movement, and modernist art movements at their heart are violently and hysterically anti-war. So to see the original vision of the founders twisted to serve a fascist war machine was heart breaking. For example, the cloth vest. So cool, right? This is from the 1920s, and the name translates to something like “War paint.” You can feel that it’s mocking the pomp and circumstance of war, and how it’s glorified. And then in the 1940s, it just all goes wrong and starts glorifying war and hyper-nationalism earnestly instead.
But then in the 1950s-1960s, it became cool again.
I had to meet my tour group at 6pm, so I made my way to the hotel meeting point. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of the group – it was entirely older white people from Australia. But then two new Yorkers showed up! They’re a nurse and a PA who work at NYU, and one of them has a sister who went to my high school! I was so, so excited to talk shop and make new friends. They said they’d get me in touch with their nurse manager. 😂
The tour guide is named Riccardo. He’s so nice. It’s a little hard to adjust to a tour group when I spent so much time doing whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, for as long as I wanted. But the group has been really respectful of me when I’m quiet and need a little space. I don’t click super well with a specific cluster of Australians who are intermittently rude, but I click really well with the tour guide, the NYC couple, and a really kind older single woman from Australia. Apparently this tour company is used very heavily by Australians. Who knew!
The tour guide took us to a restaurant for dinner but tbh it did not meet the standards I expected. But I could tell why he picked it – they had huge portions, and a really diverse menu with a lot of American offerings, like burgers. So it was a really safe choice for a “first meal to ease you in” dinner. I got the gnocchi and it was kind of “stick to the roof of your mouth and your tongue” gummy, so I couldn’t really taste anything. And the cheese wasn’t as good quality as others I’ve had here. Basically it felt like the Italian version of a diner. Not great, not awful.
In Italy you have to pay for water. I ordered still water for myself, and my entire group drank it! I don’t think they knew that water costs money here. So I ordered a second bottle and then literally kept my hand on it. Someone asked to drink some and I said No! I paid for it!! 😠I drank all of my water to assert my dominance, because I am a joke. It really bothered me though!!!!
After dinner, I went with my new NYC friends to a vegan restaurant to have a dessert. I had vegan panna cotta with strawberries. It was really good!
The hotel itself was kind of interesting. They’d remodeled so it had nice amenities, but then they hadn’t changed the door locks so there was a specific trick they had to show me so I could get in. “We’re trying to be fancy in a very old building,” that kind of a vibe. I had a good night’s rest, and now we’re off to Naples!
See you tomorrow!