Rome, Italy — Capitoline Museums

Last night we looked through our guide books to plan out the next few days. There's a lot to see in Rome.

First on our list for today was Basilica di San Clemente, which is a 12th-century basilica built atop a 4th-century church built atop a 2nd-century temple over a 1st-century Roman house. Unfortunately we arrived just after noon and the lower levels are closed from noon until 3pm.

So onto our next site, Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterno. From the 4th to 14th centuries, this was the most important church for Christians. It's still the pope's seat as the bishop of Rome.

We had trouble finding the entrance, first getting nice pics of the obelisk in Piazza Giovanni Paolo II, and then the octagonal Lateran Baptistery which was pretty cool. Finally found our way the entrance of the basilica, fronting on another piazza bearing its name (or maybe the other way around).

The Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterno is amazing. As we read later, it's one of the four papal basilicas in Rome (this being the 2nd we've seen). The interior is designed mostly by Borromini, whose work we're seeing more and more (at least, we now recognize his name).

It was time for lunch so we searched for something close. Ended up at Le Virtù in Tavola. We split the cacio e pepe for the pasta and the veal saltimbocca for the main. It was excellent, one of our favourites meals so far.

We wandered around some of the nearby streets. We were a bit off the tourist trail and the streets had a nice vibe.

It was nearing 3pm by this point so we headed back to Basilica di San Clemente. Got our tickets, and then descended under the basilica. The self-guided tour of the excavated ruins is pretty cool.

On our way back to the hotel, we walked by the Capitoline Museums and we still had energy, and figured there would be fewer crowds at 5pm. So climbed up the stairs to the entrance, got our ticket, and entered.

The museum is very impressive. The masterpieces such as Caravaggio's La Buono Ventura have a plastic reproduction for visually-impaired to 'feel' the paintings, which I hadn't seen before. We had many of the rooms to ourselves which was nice.

Bought a couple small souvenirs at the gift store, and then exited. We then realized there was a whole other building in the museum that we hadn't seen yet. Later I looked it up in the guide book and there's a tunnel between the two. We were done for the day so even if we had figured it out at the time I'm not sure we would have spent much more time.

We asked our hotel for dinner recommendations (they said we'd need reservations as it was Saturday). They booked us into Ai Bozzi. Our hotel manager wrote down the names of the owners (he knows many of the restauranteurs personally) so we could name-drop at the restaurant.

Trastevere was hopping and we were glad to have the reservation. Dinner was great - we tried the sea bass carpaccio with a pistachio sauce, followed by a shrimp ravioli. For the main we decided on pig's stomach because it sounded interesting, until we realized it was a loose translation of pork belly. We also messed up ordering the wine, again lost in translation was that we were okay with going by the glass to make it easier to match. Instead we ended up with the house red which was good, but they have a large wine selection which we would have preferred. Oh well. It was an excellent day of eating all around.