Angels and Demons

I apologize for the lack of updates. I was struck down by a cold that slithered through the cast two weeks ago and so the blog took a hit as well. I will try to recount the different fun things we did the past two weeks, in no particular order.

My friend Christine's father recommended that I read Dan Brown's "Angels and Demons" in order to get a fast and easily digestible overview of Rome. I'm glad I did, because it gave us some fun places to go to that I otherwise wouldn't have known about. A few Romes ago, we visited the Chigi chapel in the Santa Maria del Popolo Church. According to Dan Brown, Rafael designed the chapel and then Michelangelo decorated it (also according to Dan Brown, it is teeming with Illuminatus symbols, but I'm not sure if that's intentional or not). But the chapel itself is beautiful and, according to our guide book (although Dan Brown would undoubtedly agree) one of the more secular chapels in Rome. The four seasons are portrayed on the ceiling, as well as the astrological forecast for one of the men buried there.

The Popolo plaza is incredibly beautiful too, and we got to wander around that for a while. Dan Brown chose not to have any elderly cardinals murdered here, so I don't have any historical information on it, but we were all taken with the fountains.