Our beloved Pope Francis declared 2025 a Jubilee Year of forgiveness, love and joy.
In St Peter’s Square with full moon above.
So we knew that Rome would be especially crowded with pilgrims… but we were not prepared for the sizes of the crowds we encountered.
Going through the Holy Door of St Peter’s, which is only opened in Jubilee Years, usually every 50 years.We attended 6 pm Mass and lingered in the evening’s less crowded space until the guards closed it all.The full moon seen from inside the St Peter’s.
We visited Rome twice on this trip — once to catch the Ryanair flight to Dubrovnik, and the second time before flying on Ryanair to Dublin. Rome is our favorite city in the world.
Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore is one of the major pilgrim sites in Rome. Above is a section of mosaic floor. San Giovanni Laterano (St John Lateran) is another of Rome’s 4 major papal basilicas, along with St Paul Outside the Walls, St Mary Major and St Peter’s.St john Lateran, the oldest basilica in Rome, has a quiet and ancient cloister.We were surprised to discover in the cloister a fragment of “The Altar of St Mary Magdalene” which once was believed to contain her remains and was originally placed in the basilica’s center aisle.
A major Roman highlight was our long-sought visit to the Galleria Borghese, an amazing museum set in a large park within the city. Cardinal Scipione Borghese (1579-1633), nephew of Pope Paul V, was a voracious collecter of ancient Roman art and commissioner of contemporary art from such as Bernini and Carravaggio. It seems that whenever he wanted a piece, he would ask his uncle the Pope to apply pressure so here could get what he wanted.
Outside the former “party house” of the immensely wealthy and powerful Borghese family, now the museum. At least this guy had some level of taste.Saint Jerome: Carravaggio used real -life models of ordinary men and women off the streets to create his incomparable paintings.Bernini turned cold marble into pulsating flesh and blood.Carravaggio also used himself as a model, as in this portrait of a young John the Baptist. The Borghese owns eight (8) Caravaggios, all of which were miraculously in house when we visited!
This blog post will close with a short mention of another Italian city we visited briefly: Bologna. We basically had to go to Bologna in order to catch a train into Ravenna (see other blog post) so we spent one night there. On the plus side: Basilica San Petronio and Museo Archaeologie’s interesting and important Egyptian collection (mostly purchased from dealers). On the other side: a B&B host who was NOT courteous or helpful, a broken lock threatening our access to our room, and a monopoly called Bologna Taxi that promised but failed to send a taxi (no Uber.)
On the plus side: tortellaci stuffed with pumpkin (the green one) and tortellaci stuffed with mushrooms in neighborhood family joint in Bologna. Tortellaci are a local specialty, giant tortellini, made from 4 inch squares of pasta.On the not-plus side: lots of streets and sidewalks torn up for construction and a non- functioning Taxi Bologna system combined with a broken lock on our B&B’s front gate.
As of October 13 we’ve been in Ireland, the subject of the next post and our last stop in Europe before return to the US. (We’ll be in DC from late on October 22 until October 28 and in Naples, Florida from late on October 30. (In between we’ll have 2 days in Minnesota.)
Anne and Ed Blog 
Ill be sure to skip bologna on all future trips to Rome!
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