SPANISH STEPS - Built on the request of Innocent XII and created by Francesco De Sanctis in the eighteenth century, this daring architectural feat with its ramps and stairs that intersect and open out like a fan definitively provided a solution for connecting the square and the Trinità Church above, providing the city with a particularly intriguing attraction that is adored by tourists from all over the world. The sight of the square in spring should not be missed, when the ramps of the staircase are literally covered with flowers and the architecture is playfully lost beneath amagnificent array of colour.
Ron was particularlyenamored with the house of the romantic poets Keats, Shelley and Byron. We spent an entire morning there, and then he inquired if we could return in the afternoon again. Keats died in that home at a very young age of an illness and Shelley died shortly thereafter in a boating accident.
When he was asked to enter a comment in the guestbook at the end of our visit, much to my delight he wrote the following (don't tell him I put this in the blog):
We went to an "audience" with the new Jesuit Pope, Francis I, with 30,000 other people. Ron was disappointed because it had a football game type atmosphere with hundreds of church tour groups all dressed in baseball caps and T-shirts identifying their parish. When each group's name was announced (it took over 1.5 hours), the group would stand on their folding chairs, jump up and down, holler and wave banners just like a sporting event. It had none of the reverence Ron had expected. Even though in the photo below, the Pope looks far away, we were quite close relatively speaking since we arrived 2 hours before the proceedings commenced. Everything was done 5 times over in 5 different languages.
Something interesting - they have car sharing. We had seen bicycle sharing in Paris. Wonder if NY has the same thing.
Amusing street art
Picturesque streetscape
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