Rome 2012 #7 [Leonardo Da Vinci Exhibition]

We didn't plan this visit, we chanced upon it when we were just combing the streets - located inside the historical Palazzo della Cancelleria. I know little of Leonardo Da Vinci besides his well known paintings - Mona Lisa & The Last Supper. Of course, books written by Dan Brown, "The Symbol" and "The Da Vinci Code". This exhibition proved to be spectacular, this guy is like 20 geniuses living in one human body - An Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. 

A classic Roman architecture.

Drafts of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Leonardo's writings are mostly in mirror-image cursive. The reason may have been more a practical expediency than for reasons of secrecy as is often suggested. Since Leonardo wrote with his left hand, it is probable that it was easier for him to write from right to left. 

His notes and drawings display an enormous range of interests and preoccupations, some as mundane as lists of groceries and people who owed him money and some as intriguing as designs for wings and shoes for walking on water. There are compositions for paintings, studies of detailsThe Vitruvian Man and drapery, studies of faces and emotions, of animals, babies, dissections, plant studies, rock formations, whirlpools, war machines, helicopters and architecture. 

The exhibition presents about fifty full scale machines: flying machines, like the precursor to the parachute, a bicycle, a hydraulic saw, and many other inventions. They are all fully operational and they can be touched and set them in motion, to grant a deep interactive experience of understanding the genius of Leonardo da Vinci. 

The machines are grouped into 5 sections. The four elements of nature - water, air, earth and fire and the mechanism section, which includes all those basic machines, with different possibility of application, like the conversion of motion or the endless screw. One of the most interesting project is the Armoured Tank, for the first time in Rome in life size: it weights two tons, and about six metres in diameter, and three metres high.

The souvenir - Simpson X The Vitruvian Man.

Rome 2012 #6 [The Pantheon & The Trevi Fountain]

The Pantheon, an adjective meaning "(temple consecrated) to all gods") is a building in Rome, Italy, commissioned by Marcus Agrippa as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome, and rebuilt by Emperor Hadrian in about 126 AD. 

The building is circular with a portico of large granite Corinthian columns (eight in the first rank and two groups of four behind) under a pediment. A rectangular vestibule links the porch to the rotunda, which is under a coffered, concrete dome, with a central opening (oculus) to the sky. Almost two thousand years after it was built, the Pantheon's dome is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The height to the oculus and the diameter of the interior circle are the same, 43.3 metres. 

It is one of the best-preserved of all Roman buildings. It has been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a Roman Catholic church dedicated to "St. Mary and the Martyrs" but informally known as "Santa Maria della Rotonda." The square in front of the Pantheon is called Piazza della Rotonda.

Source: Wikipedia

First King of Italy.

The Pantheon dome. The concrete for the coffered dome was poured in molds, probably on the temporary scaffolding. The oculus is the main source of natural light.

The interior of the dome was possibly intended to symbolize the arched vault of the heavens. The oculus at the dome's apex and the entry door are the only sources of light in the interior. Throughout the day, the light from the oculus moves around this space in a sort of reverse sundial effect.

Fontana del Pantheon. The person on my right must be really tired.

What we saw around the Pantheon.

The Trevi Fountain is the largest Baroque fountain in the city and one of the most famous fountains in the world.

A traditional legend holds that if visitors throw a coin into the fountain, they are ensured a return to Rome - I didn't throw any. An estimated 3,000 euros are thrown into the fountain each day. The money has been used to subsidise a supermarket for Rome's needy.

Rome 2012 #4 [Villa Borghese & The Spanish Steps]

Villa Borghese is a large landscape garden in the naturalistic English manner in Rome, containing a number of buildings, museums and attractions. It is the second largest public park in Rome (80 hectares). The gardens were developed for the Villa Borghese Pinciana ("Borghese villa on the Pincian Hill"), built by the architect Flaminio Ponzio, developing sketches by Scipione Borghese, who used it as a villa suburbana, a party villa, at the edge of Rome, and to house his art collection. The gardens as they are now were remade in the early 19th century.

The nearest metro station to Villa Borghese. I have the impression that all metro stations in Europe share the same traits - very raw and unkept. Maybe, I've been too accustomed to how every metro station in Singapore look almost like some kind of mini art museum exhibition - clean, sleek and organised that I am here complaining like a pampered child while people in my own country is still complaining about how much our metro system has gone from bad to worse.

Here in Rome is where I saw policemen trying to drag a group of kids no older than 12 years old out of the trains because they are pickpockets and how kind locals were trying their best helping to warn us, the tourists that, "Be careful, they are robbers". This is where you see kindness and the the sad reality of these kids being placed side by side against each other. How their society (in fact, a lot of other societies are in this plight too) is falling apart, when you cannot expect your country to provide you with jobs even when you graduated from universities; where families fall apart because the parents fail to bring food home and when children find it hopeless to go to school and decided to do it their way to make ends meet - to steal. Instead of spending their time in school, they lurked around to jump on any opportunity they can find on gaining every cent in their pocket, orthodox or not. 

Main entrance into Villa Borghese.

The museum inside the garden. I don't have any pictures inside of the museum cos no cameras are allowed.

This is the museum where the famous painting, "Young Woman with Unicorn" is kept.  

Image Source: Wikipedia

A very nice café sitting inside the garden.

In 1605, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, nephew of Pope Paul V and patron of Bernini, began turning this former vineyard into the most extensive gardens built in Rome since Antiquity. The vineyard's site is identified with the gardens of Lucullus, the most famous in the late Roman republic. In the 19th century much of the garden's former formality was remade as a landscape garden in the English taste. 

 

The Spanish Steps lead up to this park, and there is another entrance at the Porte del Popolo by Piazza del Popolo. The Pincio (the Pincian Hill of ancient Rome), in the south part of the park, offers one of the greatest views over Rome. 

The Spanish Steps (Italian: Scalinata della Trinità dei Monti) are a set of steps in Rome, Italy, climbing a steep slope between the Piazza di Spagna at the base and Piazza Trinità dei Monti, dominated by the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. The Scalinata is the widest staircase in Europe.

Piazza di Spagna in the background.

The monumental stairway of 138 steps was built with French diplomat Étienne Gueffier’s bequeathed funds of 20,000 scudi, in 1723–1725, linking the Bourbon Spanish Embassy, and the Trinità dei Monti church that was under the patronage of the Bourbon kings of France. 

This huge fountain at the bottom of the Spanish steps. Rome has loads of fountains. You see one at almost every corner.

The Spanish Embassy.