Air, Landier, and Sea

Fun fact about Bryce during travel is that he’s the early bird. Bryce started his day at 6am, got breakfast, coffee (of course), and planned the day while I slept in until 10am.

Just a moment of gratitude for my wonderful husband. I tend to tease him about his last minute planning style, but the reality is he plans everything when we go on these trips. He watches videos on the best sights to see, places to eat, and cafes to get coffee, and then coordinates all of the tour guides, rides, and reservations. He’s truly the best and I’m so grateful for all the work he puts into to making all of our vacations absolutely spectacular.

So after I rolled out of bed and got some cappuccino, we met our guide for the Palazzo Colonna.

If you’re like us (and our cab driver), you haven’t heard of the Palazzo Colonna.

It’s definitely one of the less sought after sights in Rome, but it’s still quite impressive.

The Palazzo Colonna is the palace of the Colonna family, which still owns and lives in the palace today. This tour is only offered on Friday and Saturday, which is when the family opens it to the public.

Before I go any further, I know everyone is wondering, how was the guide? She was excellent. Eccentric, but in such a fun way. She truly loves the Palazzo Colonna. In her words “Every time I leave this place it’s a tragedy because it’s where I feel at home.”

Here’s some interesting things we learned about the Palazzo Colonna:

• The Colonna family has an incredibly large collection of art. Although it’s owned by the family, the state of Italy requires them to open their doors to share it with the public. Also, they’re not allowed to sell any of the artwork.

• Marcantonio Colonna participated in the naval Battle of Lepanto, where he helped defeat the Turks in 1571. The Colonna family is obsessed with this fact and “celebrates” it by placing many depictions of Turkish slaves around the palace.

• The hall of the Palazzo Colonna is where Audrey Hepburn sees Gregory Peck for the last time in Roman Holiday.

• Oddo Colonna became Pope Martin V in 1417. He was the pope to end the Great Schism and bring the papacy back to Rome.
• The Colonna family has continued to be friends with the popes over the years, which helped protect their palace. During World War II, although the family fled, the palace wasn’t raided due to papal protection.
• Our guide loves this palace so much that we had to wait for her to take selfies during the tour. She said she takes them every time she’s there because she just finds it so beautiful. She even asked the guards to take her photo a couple times- we offered, but she didn’t seem to want to inconvenience us (it was actually very cute).

• During the tour we saw Princess Isabella’s apartment, which was left exactly the way she decorated it. She was originally from Lebanon and married into the Colonna family. She’s known for saying “I fell in love with the palace first and then my husband.” (Our guide seemed to understand)

• Bryce does a great impression of The Bean Eater.

We really did enjoy our tour at the Palazzo Colonna and got to see some incredibly beautiful artwork. It’s amazing what the Colonna family was able to collect and protect for all of these years.

We then had an incredible charcuterie lunch on November 4th street.

We not only got to sit indoors where there was some air conditioning, but close to the patio so we could watch people stroll by and one of the restaurant workers spray passers by with a hose as he cleaned the patio. Since it was so hot people didn’t seem to mind and he was quite entertained, as were we.

Our next stop was Basilica San Clemente.

Basilica San Clemente is a really interesting place because it’s a working church built on top of an ancient church, built on top of an even more ancient pagan temple.

As the Italians say, “Rome is a true lasagna!” Layer upon layer, upon layer.

We were unable to get a tour guide for this because it’s not extensive enough to just get a guide for this, so it typically is combined with other tours.

As Bryce was going up to the ticket window, he got cut off by a woman, who rather forcefully moved herself in front of Bryce in order to get her tickets first.

The funny part was that when Bryce went to look up a YouTube video of the Basilica San Clemente that we could follow along with, the guide on the video was none other than the line cutter herself! So guess who had the last laugh!

Actually, she did. We accidentally looked up a video of Sant Angelo, so we weren’t able to get her San Clemente tour for free, but we still laughed about it.

There were no videos or photos allowed in the Basilica, so we can’t show you anything from it, however, it was amazing to see not only the beautiful working church, but the excavated underground, which had frescos from the 4th century, and sculptures and wall carvings from the temple even earlier than that.

An incredible lasagna!

Lastly, we went to the Pantheon (this time when it was open…kind of)

Things we learned about the Pantheon:

• It isn’t open at night (learned day 1 in Rome)
• It is only open until 7, not 7:30pm (learned day 2)
• On Saturdays they have mass at 5pm, so it’s once again, not open to the public (learned today)

Here’s to hoping we can get in tomorrow!