Journal 3

I think I’m most proud of going to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore. It was the first site that I went to using my own skills along with Guerry. Neither one of us was quite able to navigate the city well but we needed to get our solo excursions out the way. I realized our blue guide had a map in the back along with all the major sites of Rome. We used it to get to the church and back. Before arriving to the church I new nothing about the church and only read a quick blurb about it in the blue book. It was much larger than I thought it would be but after two weeks in Rome, large basilicas stop being awe-inspiring.

Since neither one of us knew what was of importance in the church, we decided to see what the blue guide had to say. Much to our look it had an outline of the church and a list of things we should see. We started with the first 3 things, A-C, which seemed to all, be near each other. They all happen to be different mosaics that were designed specifically for the church. Though we couldn’t really tell which mosaics were which. I wasn’t to impressed with the mosaics since they were all near the roof and hard to see. We then moved on to the next thing, which was the same structure in the center that the Lateran church had. This one was unique though because we were allowed to walk down it and see what was down there. I was impressed with this because at the bottom was a statue of a pope kneeling and praying. A few feet in front of him was an altar thing with a silver baby Jesus statue.

This gave me a hint of what this church was about. As we continued moving around the church we saw the various side chapels in the church. Only two of them were open to the public. One of the others was reserved solely for prayer and no pictures can be taken. Another was simply closed for renovations. I noticed that the roof of the basilica was largely the same as the Dominican church we went to on the Aventine. It was just a flat rectangular surface. Most other churches we’ve been two don’t share this quality, so I wonder the significance of these roofs.

The blue guide then mentioned that the church has a museum with things of “relative interest.” I interpreted that is being not of interest but Guerry wanted to go to it in order to explore the church more. As we went we paid our four-euro and entered. I was surprised that museum was underground. I was also surprised that we only saw one other person in the museum. I figure its not heavily advertised as part of the church. The blue guide only pointed to a few things for us to take note of but most of the items we saw were either paintings or robes of priests and popes. As we kept walking we began to realize that this museum housed a large number of pope memorabilia. Robes, gloves, journals, painting, crowns, were all among the items on display. We thought we were done until I found yet another long hall way we had yet to go through. There was a large amount of golden objects like crosses and crowns that way. By the end of the trip I realized that this church must have had great importance to the popes at one point since they seem to have so much stuff from them.