Roma

The experiment had some problems on Wednesday, and we had to stop it to fix it. Normally that would be good news, because it would take a couple of days to fix it and we wouldn't be able to start until Friday or Saturday, guaranteing the free weekend. Normally, but not in the XENON experiment. In this experiment, it meant we would start on Saturday, and continue working through the weekend. After all, why wouldn't we want to work on the weekend? This was Elena's (the PI from Columbia, and spokeswoman of the Experiment) thinking, and ultimately her decision, taken arbitrarily and without consultation, to everyone else's dismay. Naturally everyone was upset, specially the the grad students that did not work directly for her (like me), as we are not yet used to the complete lack of reasonableness. Fortunately for us, unfortunately for them, her Post-Docs came to a solution: all Post-Docs would work through the weekend, while the grad students would be allowed not to work this weekend (mind you, we had already worked through last weekend). Thus we were freed at last, and hasted into getting the hell out of town before anyone changed their minds. And we made our way into Rome.

I joined with 3 other grad students, Luis (from Coimbra, Portugal), Angel (Mexican, from Yale) and Roman (Texan, from Rice U.) and by bus we reached Rome at 10:30. We headed straight to the Vatican, where we were amazed by the beauty of the huge St. Peter's square and disappointed by the even larger line to enter St. Peter's Basilica. Regardless, we braved it and entered the basilica. It is an enourmous building, and the domes, although famously large, is just a detail in the gigantic structure. Everything is covered in details, paintings, statues. I am no fan of sculpture as an art form, but I was impressed by the amount of work put into the decorations and statues. I was specially impressed with the fluidity of marble "fabric", like the Bernini sculpture of women holding a red marble "mantle" that flowed from a underneath the statue of a pope and covered a flying skeleton (death), all built above and around a door close to the main tomb. Perhaps I would have been more impressed by Michelangelo's Pietà, housed close to the entrance, but it was a small statue and kept far from the public by a plastic wall, which made proper appreciation difficult. Also house in the Basilica were St. Peter's tomb and the body of a pope inside a transparent casket. I couldn't tell who the pope was because the place was devoid of labels and signs for tourists.

From the Basilica we tried to go to the Sistine Chapel, but it was closed (it has a strange and complicated schedule). We decided to leave it for the next time, like we did with going into the Castle of Sant'Angelo, next door to the Vatican. From the Vatican we headed into the Historic Downtown, and just walked around as much as we could. We visited the Piazza Navona, with its 3 fountains, the central one done by Bernini. We ate at a restaurant close to the Pantheon, Opera Cafe, where we ate the "tourist menu", a selection of appetizer, main dish and side dish, plus water and coffe. The food wasn't cheap (12 euros), didn't taste particularly good and came in small portions, so I wouldn't recommend. We visited the Pantheon, the collosal ancient temple of the ancient Gods, where Raphael is buried (on his tomb, the inscription: "Here lies Raphael, by whom the mother of all things [Nature] feared to be overcome whilst he was living, and whilst he was dying, herself to die"). We headed to the Fountain of Trevi, which beautifully blends an ancient temple look with natural-looking "rock formations". Then we headed to the Roman Forum and Coliseum, and we just ended the day walking around the ruins and parks of the Roman Forum and Circus Maximus, until sunset. Afterwards, we went to the Spanish Steps, which was full of young people who seemed to go there to see and be seen. There we rested a little, enjoying the view, and finally we left to the bus station.

Although I list here only a few places and sights, we saw a myriad of beautiful building, statues, fountains, bridges, sculptures and structures everywhere, but it's just so much to detail every single single of even to capture them all in pictures. At some point, you just realize there is too much to take pictures of everything and you decide you are wasting time snapping pictures instead of just enjoying the view. I know this doesn't help, but you really have to see it in person. There is more than just the individual objects that are catalogued in pictures - there are the streets, the views, the angles, the backgrounds, all the different compositions and effects that really require one to just walk around to take the city in. I don't think I have enough experience with cities like this, haven't visited [let's say] Paris, and having only New York, Lisbon and Porto as points of reference; but what strikes me most about it is the sheer volume of history and art all around the city. There is plenty of history and art in Lisbon and Porto (New York pales in comparason, so let's drop it), but not so explicitely and abundantly as I found in Rome. We walked fast through the city and its sights for an entire day, knowing full well that we would only get an "outline" of the city, that we would need several future trips to see it all, but I think we only managed to skim a fraction of its surface. We look at the maps and books and there is still so much more to see and experience...

I think what best prepared me for the experience was the novel "Angels and Demons", by Dan Brown. I especially liked recognizing all the places from the book. The book center on a Harvard professor running around Rome and its touristic attractions trying to stop a plot to destroy the Vatican, and it includes many of the places that I saw: the Pantheon, the Piazza Navona, the Castello Sant'Angelo, and many others. In spite of terrible physics elements it contains (I cringed at its use of anti-matter), it is still a thrilling and fun book, very similar to his other work, "The Da Vinci Code", and I highly recommend the book, specially if you are coming to Rome :)

Now, a note about the pictures. Naturally, I wanted pictures of me in front of the sights, and I asked Roman, and sometimes Luis, to take pictures of me in front of stuff. This was a mistake, because Roman screwed up almost every picture in some way or another. I would have been better off asking strangers to take the pictures. First, it seemed that his focus was on the person and not on the sight, which is pretty stupid because you can take pictures of people anywhere, even at home - the location, the scenery is what matters in trip pictures. You don't have to capture the whole person, from toes to head, a waist or breast to head shot would suffice. With few exceptions, nobody is interested in seeing feet and floors. In most cases, you can safely put the horizon line close to the bottom edge of the picture. Also, the person doesn't need to be at the center of the picture. In fact, it's probably best to put the person to the side (1/3 point), taking as litle space as possible, to try to get as much of the scene as you can. NEVER sacrifice the scene to get the person in! There were a couple of picture that were useless because they failed to actually show the interesting features of the sight, focusing solely at the person. For instance, there is one picture of me (not included in the Album) in front of a highly worked fountain with statues. But because of the way it's framed, you can't actually see it! I mean, you can see I am in front of something made of marble that probably has statues and probably has intricate work, but the person (me) covers the intricate work in the middle of the fountain and the statues, that are on either side, are cut out, so that you can only see part of a leg of one and the head and one arm of the other, completely missing the composition. And there are plenty of other pictures that cut out the bodies of obelisks, nice windows in the buildings, or that simply do not capture the scenery in a meaningful way, like te picture of me in front of the Pantheon, where you can see columns but not the temple (the picture I took of him was much better). Another thing that annoyed me is that the pictures weren't difficult to take - whenever I took the same picture (like of him in front of the Pantheon, not in Album), the angle and framing were much better! Finally, he was insistent on taking vertical pictures even when I asked him to take horizontal pictures, because these come out much better on the computer screen. Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I just went through the pictures and was very disappointed to see so many potentially good pictures of me in Rome wasted because of bad framing.

In spite of the complaints, there are tons of great pictures, and if you feel like seeing them, you can click here for the small album (31 photos) or here for the large one (77 photos). The picture above will take you to the small album.