Crypts and Catacombs

Today we slept in until 9 am. We discovered that those people who breakfast early get more choice and more space than those people who sleep in. We also discovered some people eat breakfast weirdly - coffee and hot milk in a cup, topped by cereal ...?
Then we went and got more cash, thanks to Aidan being trustworthy and careful, and went to the train station and purchased tickets to Florence and Venice. I also bought a cutesy little wallet, because I was not enjoying just having my cash lie around loose in the bottom of my purse. It has a lot of empty card pockets.

We took the Metro to Piazza Barberini - the metro was very busy, so although we thought the Holy Weekend was super busy, apparently it is even busier when the locals join in. We looked in a few shops, Aidan purchased some little souvenirs for friends, we had lunch. Then we met at Tritan's fountain (by Bernini of course) for our afternoon tour.
Our tour this afternoon was of crypts and catacombs. We had a nice tour guide - Pete, from Detroit, California and Rome (according to him). There were two walking groups who shared a bus - the bus because the catacombs are out of town, two groups because the catacombs aren't spacious. First we went to the Domitilla Catacombs.

Perhaps I should mention that because these are ancient Christian Burial grounds (or churches or monasteries, as the later ones were) we were not allowed to desecrate the sites by taking photos inside. You can tell it was a nice spring day today. Inside these catacombs we saw the top two of four layers. Because of prior tourists and vandals taking bones, the burial niches were all empty and the remaining bones were all on the bottom 2 layers, which are not open to the public. It was still really interesting, walking through these narrow underground tunnels with various sized niches on the side (child, adult, or family sized - plus tiny ones for lamps and perfume).

This is Aidan outside the church of San Clemente, which was our next stop. The top church is your basic 12th Century church, with its later decorations - a fantastic tiled floor (Aidan mocks me because I'm always impressed with the floors), paintings, carved and painted ceiling, and so forth. The canopy over the alter, however, is older - because it come from the 4th century church that was discovered underneath (and they put the new one in the lower church, after they discovered it.) The 4th century church, in turn, was over pre-Christian apartments, which included a temple to Mithras. It was also very neat.
Finally we went to the Crypt of the Capuchin Monks, which isn't underground, but is decorated with thousands of monks bones. The rooms are known as the chapel of the Pelvises, the Skulls, the Femurs and Tibias (for rather obvious reasons). The last room has a quote (in Latin, but I'll translate) "What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be". The chapels were a little macabre, but oddly beautiful. Once again no photos allowed inside, so I purchased a postcard and took a picture of it. This was Aidan's favourite of the rooms. The middle part has the skeletons of two little princesses who died of the plague, although the majority of the bones are monks bones (ie. adult male).

After our tour we went down to take the Metro home. We looked at how crowded it was (there were tons of people who physically could not possibly fit on the train that came) and went back out and walked home instead. We stopped occasionally to check out the sights - below is one cool scupture we saw - each of the 4 corners of the intersection were similarly decorated, plus a fountain on one corner.

We stopped in at a restaurant we had loved a couple of days ago, and the staff ran forward and greeted us like long lost relatives and ushered us to our table before the people in front of us. The same waiter we had so liked last time waited on us again. Aidan is sad that we won't be eating another dinner in Rome, because she'd like to go back again! They seated us in the open window area, so Aidan did her best to make the restaurant look attractive and fun and entice passers by in.