Pearls in Rome, Day Three (Catacombs, St. Paul Outside the Walls)

If you've been following along the last couple of days, you know what my hubby and I did on Day One and Day Two during our recent trip to Rome.  This brings us to Day Three of our unforgettable Roman Holiday (and by now, I was feeling quite Audrey Hepburn-esque about Rome--utterly charmed by the city, to put it mildly, and endlessly fascinated by everything I saw, heard, touched, smelled, or tasted).

(A quick aside: I just purchased an electronic copy of that 1961 classic--with the peerless Gregory Peck starring alongside Hepburn--on Amazon Prime and watched it yesterday.  The entire film was shot on location in Rome, and I got Romesick watching it, I can tell you!)

Anyway, back to reality--and moving on with the day-by-day blog scrapbook from our trip.

Friday, March 22

On Friday, the third day of our sojourn, my husband and I were picked up right at the door of our apartment at 9:15 a.m., by a charming and affable Italian tour guide named Sammy.  We hopped into his minivan, joining another English-speaking couple from the UK, and our first stop was a hill overlooking the city, where Sammy wanted to show us one of Rome's semi-secret treasures known as the Aventine Keyhole.

In a green doorway that once led to the Priory of the religious order called the Knights of Malta (the legendary crusader knights), there is a keyhole that by some amazing coincidence or ingenious design, I don't know which, lines up perfectly with the Vatican in the distance.

Sammy helping my husband get his iPhone set up to get a good picture.

Taken with my iPhone, this is the view through the Aventine Keyhole!

Sammy noted that the Vatican's courtyard has a keyhole shape as well (illustrated clearly in this Internet photo I found).

It can't be a coincidence!  The Knights of Malta must have searched for just the right spot on that hill to put a door, with a perfectly aligned keyhole to peep through.

Next, we rode out toward the countryside where the catacombs are located (more than 60 of them in all, made up of hundreds of kilometers of underground passageways).  Along the way, we passed by the ancient brick and stone walls that used to enclose and fortify the entire city of Rome.

Sammy dropped us off at the entrance to the Catacombe San Callisto, home of an iconic marble statue that is a likeness of martyr St. Cecelia as she looked lying slain on the ground.  We had a different tour guide who walked us through this incredible three-story labyrinth of ancient Christian burial sites.

Taking pictures was not allowed underground, understandably; so afterward, my husband and I bought some frameable photos of St. Cecelia and an informational pamphlet about the catacombs at the on-site souvenir shop.

There are very few bones left in the catacombs, and the marble or stone covers for the tombs were long ago stolen by vandals to use in other building projects around Rome over the centuries.  But even though the tombs are empty, one can't help but be ineffably moved seeing all those spaces dug out in the earthen walls, from floor to ceiling (many of them tiny, because 40% of the 500,000 souls who were once buried in just this catacomb alone were babies or children).

We met up with Sammy again after the catacomb tour, and he had us take a little walk along the Appian Way.  Built in 312 BC and spanning 350 miles, this road was Europe's first superhighway.  The Via Appia stretched from the Roman Forum all the way to Jerusalem (or actually to Brindisi, which is as far as you can go before hitting water), back when the Roman Empire encompassed most of Europe and "all roads led to Rome."

After a short stroll on this ancient yet incredibly well-preserved road, we got back in the van and headed toward San Paolo Fuori Le Mura (St. Paul Outside the Walls), one of the four Papal basilicas of Rome.

Oh.  My. Goodness.  Gracious!

How does one describe such a majestically beautiful place?  There are no words.

But here are some pictures that I hope will speak thousands and thousands of them for me.

It's killing me that in spite of how lovely these photos are, they really don't quite tell the story well enough. Standing in this magnificent church, surrounded by its resplendent beauty, utterly took my breath away, and just gazing upon all the ornate embellishments and gorgeous artwork covering every single square inch of space made me feel closer to Heaven.  I imagine the hundreds of painters, craftsmen, sculptors, woodworkers, metalworkers, etc. high up on scaffolding, who worked countless hours to create all of this for one reason: to showcases the glory of God. It's almost too much to bear.  More than once during our week in Rome, my eyes pricked with tears as soon as I entered one of the many churches we visited.  They are all indescribably beautiful--even the most modest among them.

After touring St. Paul Outside Walls, we said good-bye to Sammy and spent some more time walking around Aventine Hill and enjoying panoramic views of the city.

Here we are, doing our best Hepburn and Peck impressions on Day Three of our very own Roman Holiday.

This photo was taken on Aventine Hill.

In our travels around the hilltop we found a smaller church called Santa Maria in Aracelli, and we stopped in to have a look around.

Of course, I knew St. Paul Outside the Walls was going to be a show-stopper, as it's one of the "big four" churches in Rome; but this lesser-known church where we decided to say our daily Rosary was also simply breathtaking.

I guess the saying goes that when you're in Rome, you must never forget to

look up!  So true; the ceilings in these churches are spectacular..

After all of our sightseeing, we finally stopped at an outdoor pizzeria close to the Pantheon (and our apartment) for an early dinner, and I ordered pizza Margherita.

This was as delicious as it looks.  Maybe even more so.

After dinner, my husband really wanted to take me to the rooftop restaurant of a hotel he'd been to before with flight crews during layovers.  He said that the view of the city from up there was fantastic and he wanted to be there with me at sunset.  We sat an outdoor table, where we ordered a few hors d'oeuvres and drinks and waited for the sun to go down.  Oh my, it was just extraordinarily lovely, as you can see.

The dome of St. Peter's.

The perfect end to a perfect day, right?

Well, we weren't done yet!  We decided to take the subway over to the Colosseum, just to see it lit up at night.

 Then we rode over to the Vatican to see it lit up as well.

And finally, we made our weary way back to our little apartment.  It had been an exhausting day, and I moaned out loud on the long walk home without even realizing I was doing it.  I believe this was the most tired I was all week, as we walked--limped!--along beside the Tiber River that night.  I was really happy to finally get back to our little apartment and rest my feet!  (But I vowed that no matter how worn-out I felt, for the rest of our time in the Eternal City there would be no moaning!  Would screen darling Audrey Hepburn moan?  No, she would not!)  We had lots of laughs about this episode.  And my travel buddy, who thinks he's just so funny, gave me a new nickname: "Mona."

Day Three was a jam-packed day, to be sure, one for the record books.  One that I will never forget.

(Congratulations, dear readers, if you made it through this post--with its 34 pictures!  Phew!   I'm going to take a little break, and I'll be back with the Day Four installment after Easter. In the upcoming days I might post some pictures taken in Rome, of religious works of art that would be apropos for Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday; but  I'll wait to continue the series until Monday.)

Dio ti benedica!