I have no idea why there are such big gaps between pictures in this post, and I couldnt figure out how to fix it...sory!
Last weekend we went to Assisi and Florence. Both were beautiful! This is the church of Saint Clare (Santa Chiara?)who founded the fransican order of nuns. We werent allowed to take pictures inside, but it was beautiful and we got to see her tomb and some relics.











A view of the city from Saint Clare's














In the piazza in front of the church this man was dressed in traditional clothing playing an Italian bagpipe with his sheep dog in front of him. It was so picturesque!
















They're renovating this because of an earthquake that hit Assisi ten years ago, but its an old hospice that was used for pilgrims traveling to the churches in Assisi so they could get food, water and other necessities.










The church of Saint Francis (San Francesco). It was huge and had an upper and lower church. We got to see Saint Francis' tomb which was beautiful. The inside had frescoes around the church depicting the life of Saint Francis, which were beautiful. The big truck in front of the church was for when the pope came the next day (we missed him by a day!)








The courtyard of the cloister for the Fransicans








































There were strings of these doves all over the city!!




































Florence was fun. The area around all of the museums and tourist attractions was pretty, but other than that its not too impressive. The view from the river is gorgeous though!!




























The sunset was beautiful! We went out to dinner with our professors. They wrote off half of the check as expenses for the trip because they said we were charged too much to come to Rome. Haha. It was the BEST meal I've had in my entire life. There were about 20 of us, so we had to wait for the restaurant to clear out, and while we were waiting they served us wine in the street! Then they brought out delicious appetizers: bruschetta, proschiutto e melone (salty cured ham that you eat with cantelopes it was surprisingly amazing!), mozarella balls with tomatoes and artichokes, and great bread to dip in olive oil. Then for the main course we had three pastas: gnocchi with red peppers, penne with different spices and my favorite tortellini with a walnut sauce! It tasted like Christmas! Haha I could have eaten that forever and been completely happy.


The inside courtyard of the ufizi gallery, one of the famous museums. It had so many famous works in it that I've seen in my art history books! It was incredible to see them in real life!
































The outside of the big church in Florence, they just call it the duomo because of its big dome. It was the most ornately decorated church on the outside that I have ever seen, and it was surprisingly plain on the inside.







































The inside of the dome. It was beautiful!





































Mary Kate, me and Steph in front of the bell tower.





















































The outside of the dome
















































Santa Croce. This church was awesome. It had tombs of so many famous people, and not even religous people! Michaelangelo, Macchiavelli, Galileo, and an empty tomb for Dante since they dont know where his body is. It also had some famous frescoes by Giotto. It was really neat.














View of the ponte vecchio (old bridge) and the corridor leading from the ufizi gallery which used to be a medici palace to the other medici palace on the other side of the river.















The ponte vecchio is covered in expensive jewelry shops. Everything was so beautiful...good thing I didnt have extra money after my purse was stolen...
















Me inside the Galleria Academia with Michaelangelo's David! (PS: this picture is illegal, you do not actually see it right now)

On Thursday of last week, I went to the Capitoline Museums. There was a lot of really neat things in them, I just picked a few of the really famous ones to post. I have PLENTY more. This is Bernini's medusa...










This is the original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius. The one in the piazza between the museums is a copy to preserve the real one.












This is the bronze statue of the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus the founders of Rome.













Giant foot...














Giant head....


















Venus


















The dying Gaul














The Amazon


















The theater of Marcellus next to some ruins.















I was on my way to the church that has the Mouth of Truth, I have pictures of that below, when I came across this church with columns in the sides and it was surrounded by ruins. I thought I'd take a look inside...










I think it was Saint Nicholas Church?



















The inside was pretty, nothing special compared to other churches in Rome. I saw a man coming up from steps in front of the altar, and usually old churches have steps leading to a famous tomb under the altar, so I peeked down to see whose relics were there. Instead of a tomb I just saw a metal gate, which was weird. So I went to walk away and the man said, "under the altar you can see the original foundations of roman temples". I thought that sounded cool so I went down the steps. The man followed me and said, "Let me show you". Turns out he was a tour guide for this place and he took me on a little tour of the underground ruins that the church is built over.







Apparently in ancient Rome there were three pagan temples built here dedicated to Janus, Juno?, and Hope. The church was built on the foundation of the middle temple, and the columns of the side temples are what I saw on the outside walls of the church. You cant really tell from these pictures but you could see the original foundation stones and the bases to the columns.







Down here further they found remains of a fish market that was underneath the temples from the etruscan period. It was so exciting to just stumble on this!











This temple was right next to Saint Nicholas Church, I forget what its name is though!

















This one is the Temple of Hercules and was right next to the one above.













Accross the street is Santa Maria in Cosmedian.


















The mouth of truth! I got a nice German couple behind me in line to take the picture (I guess those years of German in high school do come in handy). Obviously Im not a liar because I still have my hand! Actually it didnt occur to me until afterward that my hand could have been chomped off...

I forgot to add on Sunday on our way to the beach we saw the pyramid of Cestius. I dont know much about it other than it was Cestius' tomb and it was built a few years after Rome conquered Egypt and was very much into Egyptian culture.








Monday, after I got all of my passport stuff done, we went back to the Colloseum and Forum since Steph, Jen, and Jennifer hadn't seen them yet. It was neat because there is so much in the forum that I missed the first time.










Doesnt this look like a postcard!! This is my absolute favorite view of the Vatican. I LOVE IT!












On Wednesday I followed Steph, Jen and Jennifer's class again to a bunch of churches I hadnt seen yet because they were closed when I went. Almost everything in Rome closes from 1-3 in the afternoon. The statue in Piazza Navona is being restored right now, but you could still peak through. It has four men on it that represent the four major rivers in the world at the time. It was really neat, but hard to see all of the imagery because of the construction. This is just one of the rivers.











This is a Carravagio painting inside of San Luigi de Francese. I just accidentally deleted the picture of the inside of the church, and these computers are so slow that I really dont want to upload it again. But the class was visiting all of the Carravagios in Roman churches, which are amazing. This one is of Saint John the Evangelist.













The outside of Sant Augustino.


















This is Saint Monica's tomb, Saint Augustine's mom who was Christian and a big part of his conversion to Christianity. Her relics are in that little green box under the altar.
















Raphael's fresco of Isaiah.



















Carravaggio's Madonna de Pellegrini, Mary receiving pilgrims. It caused a big uproar because of the lowly setting and the dirty state of the pilgrims.

















The inside of Santa Maria del Popolo. Most of the frescos are gone, but the church is still really famous and important because of the artwork in it and the rich and famous romans buried in it









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Carravaggio's Conversion on the Way to Damascus. It
depicts when Saul (St Paul) fell off of his horse and heard the voice of God. Its a really powerful painting.

















Carravaggio's Crucifixion of Saint Peter. Also a very powerful painting.
















McDonald's sold gelato! Crazy!


















On Wednesday Mary Kate and I had tickets for the Borghese Gallery. Its a beautiful museum, second best in Rome next to the Vatican Museums. It was really beautiful, there were a lot of famous Bernini sculptures. We weren't allowed to take pictures inside though...








In front of Bernini's Triton fountain in Piazza Barberini.












Another smaller Bernini fountain with the bees. Bees were a symbol of Bernini's family and you can find them on a lot of his work. Its pretty neat.
















Then we went down to Saint Paul Outside the Walls. Its one of the four Papal basilicas in Rome. It is outside of the city walls because it marks where St Paul was buried, and they didnt bury people in the city. The church is beautiful when you come at it from the front, as opposed to the back and you're confused if you have the right church because it doesnt look as pretty as the picture in the book...just a suggestion.





The inside. It was gigantic. It looked bigger than Saint Peter's, but that could be because it was almost entirely empty.











The tomb of Saint Paul can partially be seen through this gate under the altar.