Saturday morning (14 December 2019) a panoramic view of part of the wall surrounding Vatican City from Viale Vaticano, the street where we were staying at Domus Getsemani.
Repubblica metro station
The sign at Repubblica metro station above the below embedded into the wall reads "Remains of a residential building from the Imperial Age. In this period, in the whole area of Piazza della Repubblica there were buildings which were expropriated and destroyed for construction of the Thermal Baths of Diocletian."
Emerging from Repubblica metro station, this is the sight which greeted us on this December Saturday morning. Piazza Republicca with the Fountain of the Naiads, landmark plaza fountain depicting 4 bronze naiads comprising of a horse, a dragon and a sea monster , constructed in 1901.
The church of Santa Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiri is in the background.
Everywhere you look in Rome, there are sights and scenes to behold from a statue, decorative details, balconies, windows, shutters and curliques to name but a few of the sights to enjoy in this living museum of Rome.
The breathtaking blue of the sky
I am 6 foot (1.82 metres) tall and here am I completely dwarfed by this gigantic door and door frame.
The Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels and the Martyrs is a basilica and titular church constructed inside the ruined frigidarium of the Roman Baths of Diocletian in the Piazza della Repubblica. The church was constructed in the 16th century following an original design, in the baroque style, by Michelangelo Buonarrot, the other architect credited with the design of this beautiful church is Luigi Vanviitelli.
The church’s website states that this church was the “last grandiose architectural design by Michelangelo’s genius” and that it is a “…a monument of history, faith, art and science.”
Beautiful images inside this magnificent church
Johan's selfie with a difference
This spectacular organ
In the courtyard of the Basilica, there is this magnificent five-metre-high (16 ft) bronze statue of Galileo Galilei Divine Man (designed by 1957 Nobel laureate Tsung-Dao Lee) which was unveiled in 2010.
The Meridian Line : Pope Clement XI, at the beginning of the 18th century, commissioned Francesco Bianchini, astronomer, mathematician, archaeologist, historian and philosopher o build a meridian line, a type of sundial, within the basilica.
It was completed in 1702 and the object had a threefold purpose. Firstly, Pope Clement XI wanted to check the accuracy of the Gregorian reformation of the calendar so as to produce a tool to predict Easter exactly, and to give Rome a meridian line as important as the one Giovanni Domenico Cassini had recently built in Bologna's cathedral, San Petronio.
Bianchini's gnomon projects the sun's image onto his line just before solar noon, around 11:54 in late October.
