Rome

Amy and Joseph walking through the colonnade in Saint Peter's Square

Inside the drum of the dome at Saint Peter's, this cherub mosaic was about five feet tall and looked like carved stone from the floor, which was at least one hundred feet down.

Climbing the dome was no small task, especially when the walls started tilting.

Me and Rome

Saint Peter's Basilica at night, actually more like 3AM

Seeing the forum and imagining what it used to be like is an amazing experience. More than any other of the ancient remnants I saw, this had incredible power.

The light streaming through the occulus in the Pantheon seemed holy, an obviously intended perception.

To show how everything in Rome is just the current layer built on top of everything before it, I chose this Roman theatre which was renovated in the middle ages to include housing and still does so.

The Villa Giulia housed an Etruscan museum, complete with this recreation of an Etruscan temple.

Hanging out at the typewriter, or the monument of Vittoria Emanuele II

Orvieto

Orvieto held my first taste of small alleyways, a common subject of my photos, especially in Cortona.

The facade of the cathedral in Orvieto was covered in scaffolding, but luckily this carving of the Last Judgement was still visible.

The Orvieto Underground tour featured a small percentage of the man-made caves carved into the soft volcanic stone under the town. This particular cellar was used for housing pigeons, an important source of food for the often besieged hill-town.
1