Russell's Blog

I haven't read the book, but Mimi has, and thought it would be fun to do a tour of Rome based on Dan Brown's book. It was actually an extremely cool tour. If you want a quick plot summary, the Wikipedia page is pretty good. When I first picked up the book, I couldn't get past the first page -- the bit about the antimatter bomb just made me giggle. Now that I've seen the place the book is about, I might give it a second shot.

We went on Sunday, so the churches we visited were having services. We visited :

Santa Maria del Popolo Church (Piazza del Popolo)

St. Peter's square

Of course everyone knows St. Peter's Basilica. Notice that Bernini designed the piazza as a Keplerian ellipse, which was a not-so-subtle dig at Church dogma. At each focus of the ellipse, the columns line up, allowing you to see out of the square.

Santa Maria della Vittoria Church (Largo di Santa Susanna)

Pantheon

The Pantheon was built more than two thousand years ago to be the personal temple of the Roman emperor. It really does defy description.

Piazza della Minerva

This is the church where Gallileo was tried, and where he was later forced to recant his discoveries.

Piazza Navona

Castel Sant’Angelo and “il Passetto”

I've posted a new gallery of the photos that came out reasonably well.