January 16, 2026

January 16, 2026

Since Florence is so busy with tourists wanting to see the same highlights, I had to make several reservations for this part of the trip. Don’t these tourists know they should be staying home in the winter?

We are out the door right after breakfast. Florence is famous for being the birthplace of the Renaissance. On our way I made a brief stop at the Baptistery to show Aimee the famous doors that are considered ground zero for the Quattrocento (the 1400’s) when the Renaissance in Florence flourished. In 1401 23-year-old Lorenzo Ghiberti won a competition for new bronze paneled doors in the new (reborn) 3-D artistic style. He later would create a  second set of doors even better that Michelangelo termed the “Gates of Paradise’.

We quickly continue on past the main square to the Uffizi Art Gallery. This museum has the finest collection of Renaissance art anywhere. This building was built to be the Uffizzi (offices) of the Medici Duke who ran Florence in the 16th century. The long halls of this office building are filled with Roman statuary collected by the Medici family. The Tribune was probably the room most meant to wow Medici visitors.

Aimee and I run through the extensive collection mostly concentrating on the flowering of the Renaissance. Medieval art was strictly religious, flat, and full of gold ornamentation. It could be highly detailed but usually very stylized.

There were several artists (eg Giotto) that laid the groundwork for the basic tenets of Renaissance art but the big three who made the most advancements were Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. They brought the subjects to life, adding volume, linear perspective, atmospheric perspective, and Sfumato painting techniques. These all combined to make the paintings look more realistic and 3-D.

Florence was the epicenter of the Renaissance because of the rise of the merchant class who made money in wool and banking and established a pseudo-democratic capitalistic republic. Unfortunately at the end of the Quattrocento, one of the Medici reasserted feudal control and Florence faded away. The next half of the museum has lots of famous artwork that the Medici collected but most of it was created elsewhere.

Several years ago while reading Dan Brown’s novel Inferno, I learned about the Vasari Corridor. So Aimee and I signed up for a guided walk at noon. When Cosimo I crushed the republic he feared assassination so he had his architect Vasari build a private walkway from his office here across the Arno River to his new home. We make the same walk from the Uffizzi, atop the Ponte Vecchio bridge, past his private chapel above a church. The walk ends in the Boboli Gardens adjacent to his Pitti Palace.

We are getting hungry so we buy a Proscuito and Mozzarelli sandwich at the Boboli cafe. It is very tasty on to-die-for bread. Aimee insists also in having another Italian Hot Chocolate.

Since the sun is shining we decide to take a walk through the vast Boboli Gardens. It is hilly with lots of grottoes, and a few fountains, but we find it mostly boring. It does have a couple spots with good overlooks of Florence across the river.

We made our way back to the hotel. Since we are close to the Basilica del Carmine, we stop in to see if we can see their Brancacci Chapel. It is supposed to be the ‘Sistine Chapel’ of the early Renaissance. We really luck out and arrive just in time for the only guided tour in English today. Aimee and I both enjoy the art lecture in this tiny chapel. It was mostly painted by two artists with the first name Tommaso (Maso for short). Their nicknames were Little Tom (Maso-lino) and Ugly Tom (Masa-ccio). They worked  together to create a “visual story” about the life of St. Peter.

On the way back to the hotel we popped into the Ognissanti Church to see its nice artwork. It has a beautiful ceiling fresco and a nice crucifix by the early Renaissance painter Giotto. But I am most intrigued by Ghirlandaio’s St Jerome in his Study. It has one of the earliest depictions of eyeglasses which are thought to have been invented here in Florence. Capitalism not only released an art revolution but one of science too (think Galileo). Weirdly the church seemed to be ten degrees colder than outside.

For dinner we had soup and potstickers at a Chinese restaurant around the corner.

January 15, 2026

January 15, 2026

Orvieto gets lots of day-trippers from Rome, but it is quiet outside midday. We are up early for our morning walk around town. Orvieto is a maze of tile-roofed Tufa-stone Medieval buildings built atop an ancient Etruscan town. Our restaurant last night even had an Etruscan cave in its cellar. Two medieval fortified towers have survived. One was turned into the town clock. Aimee is happy that we stumbled upon the weekly market in Piazza del Popolo. Ceramic crafts are popular here. While she shops I walk around taking photographs.

When we reach the far western edge of town we turn and head to the Duomo. We have to buy tickets to tour the Gothic interior. It is mostly uninteresting except for the San Brizio Chapel. That was decorated by the Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli. The Sermon of the Antichrist panel features the Devil whispering in the orator's ear, a veiled political statement about the Florence leader, Savonarola. The framing is full of Grotto-esque figures inspired by the discovery of Nero's Domus Aurea. The adjacent Last Judgement panel in turn influenced Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.

Our Duomo ticket includes a museum that we quickly walked through and a visit to the crypt. The only thing I found of interest is a collection of medieval tools,  including a dozen wooden pulleys used during construction of the Duomo.

We moseyed back to the hotel where we collected our luggage and waited for the funicular down to the train station. I took the opportunity to check out the old Papal gate that guarded the medieval approach to this fortified hilltop town. Our train was supposed to be ten minutes late. Fortunately we ignored that advice. The train left right on schedule.

Two hours later we met up with the Arno River which we followed to Florence. We found our nearby hotel. It is a madhouse though, more crowded than Rome. After checking in, we explored the San Lorenzo market. We then found a nice Trattoria for dinner. We had a tasty meal of Greek Salad and Fried Chicken with Peperonata. We followed it with Tiramisu. The restaurant looked like a former palazzo.

January 14, 2026

January 14, 2026

Aimee was sorry to check out of our Rome hotel this morning. She loved everything about it especially the breakfast. I much appreciated the free beer that showed up every day in our fridge. What’s not to like about that?

We walked to the train station and checked out the departure board. It said our train left from Track 1EST. Aimee thought that meant they estimated it might be track 1. We have been fooled before by this kind of thing. I assumed this meant some weird track. I was right; it meant east, as in halfway to Greece. It was a lengthy march down an extra long passageway. Even though we were early we barely made it on before the train pulled out of the station.

Our train followed the Tiber upriver into the mountain spine of Italy. Two hours later we arrived in the hill town of Orvieto. We crossed the road and bought funicular tickets to sweep us up to the city level. Our hotel was two blocks uphill higher into the city.

We are too early to check in so we dropped our bags and wandered towards the city center. It was a slow walk as Aimee wanted to browse the many stores. We were gobsmacked when we reached the Duomo in the central piazza. It is beautiful and has the most unique decoration I have ever seen. The lower half of the front facade is covered in marble that has been sculpted in bas-relief just like the many Roman sarcophagi we have seen. The upper half of this Gothic cathedral is filled with gold mosaic paintings.

While Aimee shops I examine the artwork in more detail, especially the bas-relief closer to my eye-level. One panel on the lower right has some scary looking scene probably representing the Last Judgement. Our visit of the interior will have to wait till tomorrow.

We stopped at an overlook onto the Umbrian valley. It is very picturesque and what we imagined rural Italy to look like with rolling hills and lots of olive trees and vineyards. We stop in a cafe for a light meal. We have Bruschetta with Hot Chocolate. It is better than before. It is so thick that it is like drinking melted chocolate. Aimee the Chocoholic thinks it is to die for.

We have an appointment to make, so we return to the hotel, check in and meet our driver. He is classic Italian, showing up with a black Mercedes, wearing sunglasses and sporting a leather jacket. He drives us the fifteen miles to the nearby town of Bagnoregio. It takes almost forty minutes because the roads in this area are very winding up and down the hills. He drops us at a parking lot on the edge of town where we get our first view of the original old town, now called Civita da Bagnoregio. It is very cool looking.

The old mule path up to this hill town has been replaced by a modern pedestrian walkway. It is a much steeper and longer climber than it looks. It is a twenty minute hike to the entrance. It was worth the effort. We pretty much have this village to ourselves. It looks like the picture perfect movie set for an Italian hill village. I later learn that it has actually starred in several Italian films. We walk to each end of the town and then Aimee does some real shopping. I get a new winter stocking cap and tasty gelato.

The Asian tour bus arrived so we took that as our cue to leave and meet our driver who has been waiting. Back in Orvieto we take the opportunity to visit the very unique St Patrick’s Well. During the 1527 Sack of Rome, the Pope took refuge here and had this new water supply dug to outlast any siege. It is an engineering marvel. The 175 foot deep water is reached by a double helix spiral ramp. Aimee and I traipse 250 steps down and then find out it is 250 steps back up. I am sweaty by the time we reach the top again.

Next door is an old Etruscan Temple from 500 BC. The Etruscans were the first settlers of this town.

Aimee and I find a nice restaurant near our hotel where we share a Caprese Salad appetizer and a meal of the local specialty Umbrichelli all' Amatriciana. Aimee raved about it. We came back to our hotel room and cracked open a bottle of the local Orvieto Classico Superiore white wine. There is something to like about rural Italian towns.

January 13, 2026

January 13, 2026

This morning we are doing something a little different. We are letting somebody else do the driving and planning. We signed up for a daytrip from Rome 20 miles east to the town of Tivoli. We walked to our meeting point and found our group and loaded on the bus.

A half hour later we arrive at the World Heritage archeological site of Hadrian’s Villa. Emperor Hadrian didn’t like living on the Palatine Hill Palace in Rome. Probably not the least because Rome had a bad habit of assassinating Emperors. So like Nero, he had a mega-mansion built, but out here at the base of the mountains in 120 AD. After a steep walk uphill we arrive at the map room that has a model of what archeologists think it looked like.

Like all Roman sites, most of the nice decorative elements were removed and recycled into new buildings. We will see one later. This left only the substructure that was eventually buried by debris. We pass the long wall of the enormous elongated Pecile, which seems to have been some kind of covered walking path. The base structure is Opus Reticulatum (Work of Netting), which was diamond shaped Tufa blocks pressed into concrete. We passed the Tufa quarry on the drive. Apparently this was ideal for construction by unskilled (eg slave) labor. Every time Rome won a battle they enslaved the losers.

We next visited the Maritime Theater. It is a small island house surrounded by a ring-shaped colonnaded pond. Supposedly Hadrain liked it as a spot to meditate and relax. The size and quantity of these facilities meant Emperors had no fiscal restraints.

We next visited the small and large Thermal Baths. Incredibly some of the dome-shaped rooms still stand but just barely.

The last major site we saw was the Canopus which was a long reflecting pond surrounded by columns, some of which are female-shaped (Karyatids). Aimee and I walk the length to the Serapeum Fountain at the far end.

We then have some free time to visit the tiny museum, divided into two separate floors. Humorously the female guard shooed us away from the exit door. We walk the fifty feet around to the entrance where she greets us. Makes no sense. The few statues that weren't looted are here. The well-traveled Hadrian must have liked Egypt as the collection includes a Nile Crocodile.

Back on the bus we drove uphill into the little hill town of Tivoli. We have ninety minutes for lunch. We walked around but found it difficult to find an open sit down restaurant. So we ended up at a pizzeria again. It was better than the Vatican. After lunch Aimee was disappointed to find almost every store closed for lunch. Welcome to small town Italy. Instead we walked out to the town park for a nice view over the valley towards Rome.

At 1:45 pm, we met up again with our guide for a tour of Villa d’Este. This was a 16th century city estate built by Cardinal Ippolito, a member of the powerful d’Este family. We learned about his older sister Isabella, the art patron in Mantua several years ago. His brother was the Duke of Ferrara, who married Lucretia Borgia. Another sister married the Duke of Milan. Ippolito was named a Cardinal at the age of 14. That probably tells me everything I need to know about the Catholic Church in those days. No wonder Martin Luther easily created the Protestant movement.

We first walked quickly through some of the rooms of the large palace. Most are gaily painted with frescoes but of mild interest. The grounds of this hillside estate is the reason for its World Heritage status.

The backyard is a garden of fountainly delights all powered by the water pressure coming off a reservoir in the hills above. We first visit a large fountain that has a walkway behind it. We next visit a stone fountain that has a hidden organ. At 2:30 a door opens and we are supposed to hear a water driven organ play. But this is Italy and it fails to operate.

We then walk to the overlook of the hillside Neptune Fountain that faces three long fish ponds. Aimee and I then walk down to take photos of the fountain reflecting in the pools.

We finish by returning up hill passing the very long Hundred Fountain, which easily has more than 100 spigots. This visit was a delight and would probably be even nicer in the Spring or Summer.

Back at the top we load on the bus for the short trip back to Rome.

January 12, 2026

January 12, 2026

This morning we left our hotel right after breakfast catching the Metro at the nearby station. We took it west across the Tiber river and walked towards Vatican City. We immediately are reminded that pre-modern popes were also kings. Vatican City is essentially the fortified mother castle of the former Papal States. We walked past a minor Papal castle in Ostia a few days ago.

We immediately run into huge lines. I bought tickets a month ago for the second earliest time thinking it would be less crowded. I was wrong. You also have to now provide specific names on the tickets. In my haste with their quirky website, I added Aimee’s name twice, so I ended up buying a third ticket in my name. I needn’t have bothered. There is too much chaos for the guards to really check IDs. Aimee said to consider it a donation to the church.

The chaos doesn’t lessen once inside. The Vatican Museum is a complex of dozens of museums most of which few people are interested or have the time for. (Except for me). They are housed in a mishmash of ancient and modern buildings. The museum route is mostly one-way with periodic detours to see a particular museum. If you miss the detour, you miss that section. Like all of Italy signage is poor. The electronic map is unreadable.

We start off with the Egyptian section. It is mediocre. There are a couple rooms on the Assyrians. Also skippable. The action heats up in the Octagonal Courtyard which has some of the best sculpture in each corner surrounded by lots of secondary works. The finest is the Laocoon. It was dug up in Rome in 1506 likely from Nero’s Golden House we explored yesterday. This classical masterpiece was an instant sensation and was the beginning of this museum. The sculpture’s inherent emotional tension inspired the Renaissance artists of the day (eg Michelangelo). Other highlights are Apollo Belvedere, Perseus with the head of Medusa, and a sarcophagus with Greeks vs Amazons.

Our path next takes us to the Hall of Animals which is a strange collection. We do laugh when we see another Mithras piece. There is also some nice mosaic floor panels. By accident I looked up and noticed the ceiling. I have to remember that the Vatican Museums are a two-fer. Much of this art collection is inside the old Papal Palace.

The next room is the Rotonda which has an immense red porphyry basin atop a beautiful mosaic floor surrounded by statues.

Next is the Sarcophagus Room. It is dominated by two red porphyry crypts across from each other that held the mother and daughter of Constantine. Only an Emperor could afford this rarest and hardest of stones.

We saw the cutoff to the Etruscan Museum and we had this site almost to ourselves. The Etruscans were the mysterious residents of early Tuscany. Scientists still can't decipher their language so little is understood about them. They were obviously very sophisticated as the artifacts (eg bronze candlesticks) are high quality. I would have liked to have slowed down here but this museum is too big to allow anything but quick glances. I am always surprised at the quantity of large vases and urns these early Mediterranean cultures accumulated.

Our path next took us down the quarter-mile main hallway. It is divided into three long sections. The Candelabra Gallery is lined with sculpture. The walls and ceiling are equally impressive.

It continues with another long hall of Tapestries. We like the Assassination of Caesar the best. The ceiling looks like a cameo setting. It is so well done, Aimee and I can’t tell if it is 3D or not.

We continue into my favorite, the Map Hall which is one of the few spots I remember from my whirlwind visit 42 years ago. It would be cool just with the medieval Italian maps that line the walls. But the vaulted ceiling full of paintings makes it a spectacular wonder. The museum crowd surges in large waves. Surprisingly if you linger you find nice gaps in the tourist flow that make this Vatican experience sometimes a bit better.

The crowd condenses and slows again when we hit the popular Raphael Rooms. These several small rooms intended to be a Suite of apartments for Pope Julius II. They are completely covered in frescoes. The most famous is the School of Athens which has all the Renaissance painters posing as Greek philosophers. We noticed some ‘grotesque’ figures Raphael added after seeing Domus Aurea by candlelight.

Usually the finale of the Museum is the Sistine Chapel. It is definitely a highlight seeing the ceiling painted by Michelangelo, after he was inspired by the newly found Laocoon. Aimee and I sit on a back pew for several minutes and contemplate this great work. Well Aimee might actually be people watching.

Since we are not part of a guided tour that can use a secret entrance into St Peters, we must navigate the long corridor back to the beginning. It has few artifacts but is strangely lined with hundreds of cabinets.

Along the way we spot a room with ancient frescoes. Several were found at the ancient port of Ostia we visited earlier. We also visit a section that has some more modern art pieces like Salvador Dali and Marc Chagall. Not sure how they got in this papal collection.

Back near the entrance, we make an effort to visit some of the miscellaneous collections we missed. We visit the Lapidarium that has a sprawling collection of funereal art. At this point even I am getting tired of sarcophagi. One motif that piques my curiosity is the prevalence of sheep and a Good Shepherd. Like many traditions we consider Christian, most were originally Roman pagan practices that we co-opted.

We ran through the Pinacoteca art gallery. It starts with the traditional religious art of stilted flat figures on a gold background.

It is visually stunning how the Renaissance changed art so drastically as we move past Raphael’s Transfiguration to one of Caravaggio’s instantly recognizable works.

I know we missed some sections of the Vatican Museum, but we are exhausted. We have a pizza lunch in their cafeteria and leave via the Bramante double helix stairs and are back on the street.

It is a long walk around the fortress walls of the Vatican to reach St Peters Square. There's crowd control barricades everywhere. We can’t get close to the Egyptian obelisk in the center. After looking around, we join a very long security screening line to get inside.

St Peters is the largest church in the world. It is enormous. There are markings on the main aisle comparing it to other famous churches we have visited. We first see Michelangelo’s Pieta that is now behind bullet proof glass after the hammer attack in 1972. We walk around the main altar with its Bernini-designed Baldacchino and then head to the exit. We pass on the dome climb.

On the way out Aimee finally spots two of the Swiss Guards in their distinctive uniforms. They are the first we came across.

We followed the pope’s fortified half-mile walkway (Borgia Passage) out to Castel Sant'Angelo on the Tiber. This started out as Hadrian's Tomb but was repurposed into a castle for the pope. The pope hid out here for 59 years after the 1870 Risorgimento (Italian Unification) never leaving the Vatican until he finally surrendered in 1929.

We follow the Tiber River east and mosey our way back to the hotel. We finally go up to the rooftop bar and have our welcome drink, a week late.