January 10, 2026

January 10, 2026

I leaned over and checked the time and was startled awake learning we had slept almost eleven hours! We have to rush getting dressed and down to breakfast for a quick bite. I guess our bodies needed the catch up rest.

Yesterday was a beautiful day in Rome despite the rain forecast. Today the weatherman got it right and we walk with raincoat and umbrellas, fifteen minutes to Palazza Colonna. We are not first in line as I was hoping. The Colonna are one of the many old money families of Rome. An ancestor was a pope and several were cardinals. They open their private residence on Saturday mornings for tours. Despite not being first, the others were waylaid getting audio guides and we were first getting to the main hall for pictures without other tourists. The main hall is the reason I wanted to come. It is stupendous. The highly polished stone floor gleams. The ceiling has a colorful fresco about the Battle of Lepanto that a Colonna ancestor commanded.

We make a circle through the other first floor rooms. Like the main hall, they are like a museum with all the fine art that this family collected over the years. After taking photos we circle again to admire the art. The family still lives in the upper floors of this large palace.

The Colonna family also owns the property across the street. It is connected by a couple bridges that span the gap. The other side contains a private garden that climbs the nearby Quirinal Hill. We walk around the garden and climb the stairs along the fountain to get nice views of the city.

We also visit a separate apartment complex that once was their Cardinal’s apartment. It is now dedicated to Princess Sveva, aunt of the present Colonna owner. This is Aimee’s favorite part learning about her life and who she married. I have to laugh as she and the room docent study Sveva’s family photos.

Aimee is now engaged and so before leaving we return to the main hall. There we sit on a velvet bench and watch the final scenes of the movie Roman Holiday on my phone. It was filmed on the steps before us. Humorously the movie had a rug placed over the steps to hide a cannonball that is embedded in them. It was fired by the French army trying to protect the pope from Italian unification forces.

From the palace we walk back to the heart of Rome past the Forum of Trajan to the Capitoline Hill. Even though it is misting rain and we are using our umbrellas we are both feeling quite content. I think we just are feeling very Roman right now.

Since it is raining we decide to spend the next few hours exploring the Capitoline Museum. The collection of art and sculpture is contained in two buildings on either side of Michelangelo’s Piazza Campidoglio. As with all Roman museums, it starts with lots of portrait busts. They must have been produced in the thousands for anybody who wasn’t a slave. It also has some exceptional sculpture. Unlike most Roman artifacts which have missing limbs and heads, this collection is almost entirely intact, even the most delicate of extremities. This museum was started with a donation from Pope Sixtus in 1471 making it one of the oldest public institutions. The pope obviously culled the best.

The museum is a maze of interconnected historical structures. One of them we stumble upon is the Tabularium, which was the records office of ancient Rome. One side is wide open with a balcony facing the Forum. It has one of the best viewpoints in Rome.

There is a special exhibition sponsored by the luxury company Cartier. Supposedly the French founder was influenced by a tour of Italy inspiring him to incorporate classical elements in his designs. His jeweled creations are dispersed among one hall of sculpture. I think the displays are in the way, but Aimee prefers the jewelry over the statues.

To my enjoyment the artifacts include some Roman sarcophagi. One is monstrous and in exquisite condition with fine bas-relief carvings. Another has cool traces of the original color surviving.

One short hall has a nice collection of porcelain from Meissen Germany. Some of the designs on display are very unique and seem to be of a higher quality than we saw in Dresden.

This museum has some famous sculpture including the Dying Gaul and the Boy with a Thorn. In an open hall are the famous bronzes. One is the she-wolf that nursed Romulus and Remus, and the original equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the only one of its kind that survived from antiquity.

Famously for centuries, some marble pieces of a monstrous statue have sat unconnected along a wall in a courtyard. Finally these pieces were determined to be from Constantine and reassembled with the missing parts fabricated. It now sits in an outdoor garden space.

Aimee is getting museum overload so we go upstairs and have a nice Panini lunch in their cafe. We pair it with the best (and thickest) hot chocolate we have ever had. The cafe also comes with great views towards the west.

It has stopped raining so we leave to go home the long way. As we pass the Victor Emmanuel Monument (nicknamed the Wedding Cake), we couldn’t resist climbing it. The hike also comes with some superb views.

A few blocks north we passed the Fountain of the Porter. It has the shape of a water carrier. After the ancient aqueducts were destroyed, people made a living for centuries hauling and selling water. Famously it was also one of the ‘talking statues’. In the days before internet and democracy, citizens posted notes on these statues with complaints about their pope kings.

A little further we stopped inside the Santi Apostoli church to admire its nice frescoed ceiling.

We then climbed Quirinale Hill, the highest of the seven. At the top is the Piazza with a fountain with the Gemini twins topped with yet another obelisk. Facing it is the residence of the Italian president.

We also quickly visited the Sant’Andrea Quirinal church. We also walked by San Carlino church which has a fountain on each of the four corners but it was behind construction barriers. We then walked down the hill to Palazzo Barberini to take a photo in front of the gate. This was the palace where Audrey Hepburn’s princess character in Roman Holiday escaped for the weekend. Today was book ended by this film.