More Vatican...Incredible pizza...and Im off to Barcelona!

So here are some more images of the vatican museums.  Like I said before, the place was huge and I have endless photos from just that tour.

One of my favorite rooms was the room of animals, filled with really dynamic animal sculptures

everybody loves a cool domed celing

dramatic much

really famous raphael fresco - school of athens

I definitely snuck my camera into the sistine chapel and stole a few pictures.  They are really strict and say that they are not allowed, but luckily im one of the few people in my group with a really small camera, so it doesnt stand out.  Got some good pictures of the famous ceiling and the last judgement on the wall.  Very cool to see in real life after always hearing about these frescos

Ceiling!

The last judgement

Famous ramp at the end

Soon after that tour, we got to take another trip to a construction site.  This is the site for the new congress building in Rome.  A project by Fuksas, the title is "the cloud."  Pretty dramatic right?  The idea is a floating cloud inside a glass and steel box that hold the new congress.  Of course, the concept is cool, but nothing is ever that simple.  After visiting the construction site, it was clear that they were going to have trouble getting this "cloud" feeling across considering the huge quantities and masses of steel they had to use to even create the form of the cloud.  But after visiting the site it will definitely be interesting to see how it comes across in the end and how the site is eventually transformed.

Does it look like a cloud yet? hmm

 And then last night, I had the best pizza in Rome.  Legit, it was awesome.  This place was called Dar Poeta and they had so many different pizza choices.  I saw one that had salmon on it and had to go for it.  It had gorgonzola cheese, mozerrella, rucola and salmon.  mmmmm.  The salmon was awesome on a pizza and the gorgonzola was also excellent.  Definitely going back there.

Excited to dig in

Digging in hardcore

 And for dessert, apparantly this restaurant is famous for their nutella and ricotta cheese calzones.  Sounds incredible right?? well it was.  Covered in powdered sugar and cocoa, filled with warm and steamy nutella and sweet ricotta cheese.  What a meal.  I left extremely stuffed.  This was my celebratory dinner after finishing our last review before our final.  Definitely bringing my sister back here when she gets here, one of my fave restaurants so far.

Yes please

Messy and delicious

Now I am off to BARCELONA for thanksgiving break! I am sooo excited.  I keep saying we are going to have to find a spanish turkey and some spanish pumpkin pie somewhere for our own little thanksgiving.  We leave tomorrow night and will be there for 4 nights.  Im not bringing my computer with me, but will be taking another huge amount of photos, so I will update when I get back.  Happy Thanksgiving!!

Church project and Vatican Museums part 1

This whole post basically revolves around our urban and architectural history class.  This class is responsible for a lot of our sight seeing, museum visiting, exploring and understanding of Rome.  We have one project during the semester and we basically get to choose any building from the Renaissance and write all about it.  The building I chose is the one below.  San'Agostino.  I was reading in one of the texts that is required for the class, and they started criticizing the proportions and the composition of this church.  I thought that was unusual because I was just so used to reading about how big, how pretty, how awesome every church is.  But this one was somewhat of an experiment during the time and they inevitably got a few things wrong.  So it sparked my interest and now I'm writing a paper on it. Its pretty interesting and the scrolls on the upper left and right of the front facade are the main subject of the criticism.  They author of the paper basically called them hugely disproportionate.  oops!

Front facade

huge side buttresses

Interior, restoration on the ceiling and right aisle

Then we got to go to the Vatican Museums with our class! That was sooo awesome and they are so big.  There was so much to see, I dont think we saw it all in our 4 hour class. We missed out on the egyptian and etruscan portions of the museum.  But I'll probably go back when my sister comes in december or at some point.  I dont even know where to start, there were rooms and rooms and courtyards, and halls, and everything filled with sculptures and paintings.  We even got to see a few special rooms not open to the public because our professor has some good connections I guess.

hall of sculptures. original

Really cool ramp

joelle knows what this one is? Its really cool and apparently well known

room not open to public.  vips only haha

Chicken Parm! Cant go wrong with an american twist on italian food.  We had our chicken parm and watched some of the earlier harry potter movies, in preparation for the new one. Its a good thing everyone here loves harry potter.

Roman Villas

Recently we did some day trips to local Villas (basically huge Renaissance palaces in the countryside with huge gardens).  We learned all about the villas and their layouts and symmetries and everything.  Of course we also had a midterm recently in our history class (i think i did fairly well, but we will see on monday when we get them back).  So heres some images from the visits.  All the gardens were way too symmetrical and the interiors were way too decorated.  They had some great views of the surrounding towns and countryside.

Villa Farnese, its actually a pentagon in plan

symmetry, symmetry, symmetry

Spiral stairs are always popular

Even more spiral stairs

Not a bad view from the balcony

Nice little dining table outside

 Oh and two random things I saw in Rome that I thought were pretty cool.  First, I saw a big group of film crew people on my way to school.  There didnt seem to be any famous actors or anything, but definitely wouldnt see a film crew back in Troy anywhere.  Then I just saw a guy carving a huge piece of sausage/bologna/meat/whatever you want to call it.  Dont see that every day either.

moviee, too bad I didnt see any stars yet

meat much?

More modern site visits and our new site

So our more recent Italian tours and adventures have included more modern site visits and explorations.  While the historic center of Rome doesnt contain much (any) modern architecture, the outlying area has some pretty impressive projects.  We visited Renzo Piano's three auditoriums.  They were pretty decent (I thought they looked like bugs on the outside) and the insides didnt seem to be anything too special.  But always good to see different things.

Giant bug auditorium

Cool wooden rehearsal hall

Roof of the stadium I showed last post

 Next we went to Zaha Hadid's MAXXI Museum.  This one was pretty awesome, in my opinion.  It recently won the Pritzker Prize this past year(International architecture award, basically for the best building in the world).  So we went to it with pretty high expectations and ready to be impressed.  And I was.  The museum was really unique and I really liked the overall form of the museum.  Im still up in the air about the rest of Zaha's works, sometimes they can be a little blobby, but I'll definitely admit I like this one.  She does a lot of cool things.  Plus shes an Iraqi women who basically is ruling the architecture world from her office in London.

exterior view

Pretty cool stairs

Pretty cool couch, right?

I thought this was the coolest exhibit

And I dont know if I've shown these pictures yet, but this is the site of our new project.  Using a fascist building, we have to modify it in any way we want.  We basically have free reign and can do anything we feel like to the site (very unusual for us, and kind of hard to figure out a good direction to go with the project) but its a cool project because its another one thats totally different than what I have ever done.  So here is our fascist church (slightly ironic because Mussolini didnt like the Catholic church, but thats another story).  I'll have to show you how we are mutating it in a future post

The church for our project

Symmetrical much?

Always exploring Rome

 After being back in Rome for a little while, we have been quiet busy.  Our studio is really picking up and we are realizing how little time we have left to whip out a full project.  No problem right? I hope so.  Our history class is picking up and we have to study for our midterm and write a long paper on a building in Rome.  Plus italian class isnt going as well as I'd hoped.  But I guess its a good reminder that I am here for school.  And no matter where I go for school, it takes a lot of work and Im totally up for it.

So our history class has actually been really interesting.  We have been taking walks all around the city of Rome and visiting historical sites and learning a lotttt about them.  (too much sometimes).  But it gets us into parts of rome we havent been to and it makes it easier to understand what we are looking at when we walk by the history of the city.  So here are some views from the top of a castle

The castle we went to the top of, right in the center of Rome

Bridge across to the castle

Great view to St. Peter's

Food! Heres some recent excellent food. We made pancakes one morning! Sooo good.  Not italian in any way, but pancakes + syrup + cinnamon was badly needed and I had lots of them.  I also had my first italian cannoli.  I had one with chocolate filling in half of it too.  Less traditional, but not going to lie, chocolate one.  Might have to get another one of those soonish.

yum

double yum

even more yum

 A few nights ago we had a birthday dinner for Kateri.  We decided to pick a new place called La Cisterna.  This was the restaurant that inspired the well from Fantasia.  It was right near our apartment.  Kind of expensive, but I got a really good grilled chicken and potatoes.  Plus we got to see the well in the basement.

Disney Birthday Dinner

The famous well from Fantasia

 And a little taste of our visit to more modern architecture.  These were a part of our history course and some contemporary site visits too.  The great thing about this program is I definitely feel like I am being exposed to as much of Rome and its architecture as physically possible.

Stadium by Nervi

Random office/residential building that stood out