Rome, October 2018

Rome leaves a very ambivalent impression of itself. On the one hand it is a classical Europe, on the other hand it is as if it were not. I will try to explain what I mean.

Take architecture, for example. In Rome there's anything and for every taste: neoclassic, renaissance, gothic, baroque.

Santa Maria di Loreto, example of Renaissance

Facade of the cathedral on Piazza Cipolo

Church of Cessa del Sacro Cuore di Geso in Prati, an example of Gothic

But you have to put your head down and we see piles of garbage. Everywhere.

Or transportation. You could take a ride on a cute thing like this.

But you'd have to wait an hour or an hour and a half for a tram or bus because the schedules there are messed up. There aren't a lot of covered stops, some don't have signage with route schedules, and somewhere it's hard to tell it's a stop at all.

Yes. By the standards of Rome, it's a perfect stop.

The most successful example of a stop: has a roof, has a schedule

And if they tell me why there are indoor stops there—they have sunshine all the time and no rain, I'll just show you this picture.

Classic landmarks like the Roman Forum...

Colosseum...

Pantheon...

The palace of Italian civilization...

The Mouth of Truth are certainly interesting, but it has't had the spirit of antiquity or antiquity for a long time. These places have all been turned into attractions and money-grubbing machines for tourists.

One of the really beautiful and atmospheric places is the non-Catholic cemetery on the south side of town.

Burials in the Roman Non-Catholic Cemetery

At sunrise, the sun lights up the manicured tombstones very beautifully

It's ambiguous with museums, too. There's Macro, which has nothing at all to look at except one work. and there's MAXXII, which is really interesting. Here is the interior of MAXXII.

“No posters.”

Splattered with real ink.

Das Schloss. You can walk around in a virtual reality helmet.

Layout of a location you can walk around in a virtual reality helmet

“This is real, right?”

More of the interesting stuff is former mental institution. The exhibit is short but atmospheric.

Portraits of patients painted by one of the workers at the asylum

Treatment room equipment “sewn into” the wall

Unlike the Colosseum, which I found boring, St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican was, on the contrary, interesting.

Everyone of course pooh-poohed the dome of the Basilica, I went there too.

The inside of the Basilica is also beautiful.

But it's dudes like this that spoil the impression. In Rome, they try to bait you at every turn: skip the line, buy unnecessary shit, do this, do that.