Day 40. Culture.

Woke up today refreshed enough to be excited about some culture. As promised, I went first to the Keats Memorial on the Spanish Steps- very touching, as it is coincidentally the anniversary of his death today. The room in which he died looks out onto the stops, about halfway up. I walked away spouting poetry..."When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain..."

Next stop- St. Peter's. Worth the long wait to get in. It's as beautiful as I remembered it. (I think we might have lost sight of context, though, when tourists are lining up for smiling thumbs-up pictures, in front of the Pieta.) Oddly, I thought some architectural education would make a difference in my appreciation of this place, and it really doesn't. Which isn't a slight against my education, at all- in fact, it reinforces that the experience of being inside great architecture is something you can't explain. I was here at age 21 and remember being deeply moved, I still get nostalgic for that memory every year when I see the St. Peter's midnight Mass broadcast every year on the news at Christmas. It's a powerful place. It says something that, when you are in a sacred place like this, the impact doesn't necessarily come from analysis, that was never the intention.

Vatican: The Sistine Chapel, also as delightful as I remembered. But wow, the Vatican is going to make you work for that moment. Follow a sign to the "Capella Sistina," and you are in for at least 45 minutes of snaking through chamber after chamber of early religious art. And tapestries. Early flat-faced iconic paintings? No thank you. Cappella Sistina, please. Medieval gruesome paintings? Cappella Sistina, where is the Cappella Sistina?? Half a mile of contemporary religious art, and not necessarily good contemporary religious art? CAPPELLA SISTINA. PER FAVORE, CAPPELLA SISTINA. So when you finally get there, whew. I read The Agony and the Ecstasy a couple of years ago- and that greatly increased my appreciation of this place. (In fact, so did the centuries and centuries of religious art you have to traverse, in order to get here.)

By the time I get out of the Vatican Museum, I feel like I have been in Sunday School for about a week, so it's off to find some food- gnocci al pomodoro, con vino della casa, in the Campo del Fiore. I haven't had any gelato yet, but trust me, that's next.