Decimo Giorno - My Dear Friends, Caravaggio, Bernini and Pricilla ( as well as the other 40,000 christians buried in her catacomb)

Today we went to the Borghese Museum. We had all squeeze in this tiny bus, a short bus as we called it. And when I say squeeze I'm not kidding we literally squeezed together just to all fit on. Once we got into the Borghese it was beautiful, it is an estate that was owned by the Borghese family and is now a huge park with many different things inside of it including this museum, which used to be the house of the family. This was one of my favorite museums ever going to, because it didn't look like a normal museum it was a beaufitul villa that just happened to have priceless works of art in it. The building itself was gorgeous and ornate inside and out, but what we saw inside was really exquisite and unlike anything I've ever seen, Bernini's sculpture's. In Hades abducting Persephone it is so realistic, I could have stood there for hours staring at it. There are dimples in her leg and the hair is so perfectly carved it is truly amazing. Then I stumbled upon an entire room of caravaggio. It was amazing to be able to see so many of his paintings in one place. I literally ran up to them and pointed them out to people because I was so excited about it. Like I've said before I have never felt so passionate about learning before. With the caravaggio, I just can't get over the fact that I learned about and saw it in a book and now I'm looking at the real painting and I know all about the background of the painting etc. It makes it so much more interesting.

In the afternoon we went to our first catacomb. We must have some kind of lucky charm following us though because we got to the catacomb late, but someone got inside and lied to a nun to get the group a tour. We were at the Pricilla Catacomb. It is outside the city walls and has over 40, 000 tombs in it stretching for 8 miles, 35 meters underground. It looked completely different from the SCAVI. It was just a dirt walk way with small holes carved out of the walls(people were a lot smaller back then.) It was dark, damp and very eerie, but there were actually a lot of frescos and symbols through out the catacomb. I found out that the first real symbol of a christ was the fish. Then there was also images like the :

• Anchor - eternal salvation - you are anchored in christ/ your faith


• 7 baskets of bread- which symbolzed breaking of the bread,


• Phoenix rising from the ashes - resurection of christ, new life


• 3 wisemen


• arante


• jonah - symbol of resurection of christ


• madonna


• alpha and omega - symbol for god


• moses and noah and jonah scene - underdog stories and the tombs were of the poorer peoples so they wanted to believe that they had hope for going to heaven - promise of something nice so that they could survive through the suffering in this life.


• hermes = christ as the "good shepard"

There are 60 catacombs in Rome and 5 are open to the public, this was the biggest. There are also a lot of unopened tombs, which is what made it even creepier, and the fact that as we we were walking the tour guide turned the lights out on us, to make us walk faster. I screamed and got very freaked out by that. Oh and stories of the christians hiding in the catacombs when they were being persecuted is a myth, but they did come down to bring things to family members, like the family tombs in the SCAVI.