My favourite short cut: Smells, Bells & The Cappella Carafa

Art History, Centro Storico, Churches, Early Renaissance, Fresco, Rome, Santa Maria sopra Minerva

Tweet A lazy stone’s throw from the Pantheon, the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva takes its name from its position above an ancient temple dedicated to Minerva. It’s my absolute favourite short cut in Rome, enter on Piazza della Minerva and leave by the back...

Palimpsest

Rome

Tweet palimpsest noun a manuscript or piece of writing material on which later writing has been superimposed on effaced earlier writing. -something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. (Shorter Oxford Dictionary, OUP) Rome is so...

Jonah, the lynchpin of the Sistine Chapel ceiling

Art History, High Renaissance, Michelangelo, Rome, Vatican

Tweet 500 years ago today, Michelangelo was finishing work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. One of the most visited, discussed, celebrated, and indeed largest paintings in the history of art. An anniversary is always a good excuse for a blog post, and given that,...

Rickety lifts and hidden frescoes: Pietro Cavallini at Santa Cecilia in Trastevere

Art History, Cavallini, Late Medieval, Rome, Trastevere

Tweet In my post about the Bessarion ChapeI I mentioned my fondness for exploring hidden corners of churches in return for a handful of small change. Well here’s another of my favourites. The church of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, with its verdant courtyard,...

The Auditorium of Maecenas

Archeology, Art History, Empire, Esquiline, Rome

Tweet I was delighted to be asked to lead the first in Context Travel’s Rome series of “Tours in the Public Interest” last month at the Auditorium of Maecenas. It embodies the idea behind Context’s initiave which seeks to draw under-visited sites to public attention....

Smoke and Mirrors: Bernini’s Ecstasy of St Teresa

Art History, Baroque, Quirinal, Rome

Tweet In February I wrote a couple of posts about the church of the Gesù, and how the Baroque made bombastic use of dramatic “special effects” to wow the faithful (here and here). In the 1600s art was one of the many tools used in drawing them ever closer to the Roman...