Street Art and an Invitation to the French Embassy...

We're staying at the Piazza della Rotunda and so we go into the Pantheon when we leave the hotel and when we return. Here's the view from tonight. You can't really tell, but the sky was a lovely shade.

Our first trip was the Ciesa Saint-Louis, one of the French churches in town. It houses the Contarelli Chapel, with its lovely Caravaggio paintings. I've included a picture I took, but it might be more helpful to click on the link and see what Wikipedia has.

Our next trip was to the Piazza del Popolo for more incredible art in churches. (All the museums are closed on Mondays.) The first painting was a Nativity by Pinturicchio. It's not on anyone's must-do list, but it was so lovely. Packed with incident but with a calmness that kept drawing me back.

On the stroll back to the hotel, we ran into some terrific street art placed on the pillars surrounding the tomb of Augustus. I took pictures of all 33, but you'll have to wait for the wholeness of it. Here's a shot of the artist. He gave me one of his art works since I expressed an interest.

After lunch, we had an invitation to the Palazzo Farnese. OK, not an invitation, but we reserved a tour of the art. The building is gorgeous. You can tell why the French snapped it up for their embassy. (Hence the difficulty in getting in.) The best sculpture is huge, called the Farnese Hercules. It's almost grotesquely muscled, but somehow the sculptor makes it work. You're left with an impression of power in repose, as Hercules is deep in thought.

Our tour guide was charming. She was French but gave the tour in Italian. She struggled over some of the architectural terms, but there was plenty of help, which made her blush each time. Terrific tour, even if we didn't get an invitation from the ambassador!

OK, one note about food. We dined sumptuously last night at a place recommended by the Michelin. There's a reason this guide is so popular, as we found all three courses we had delectable.

Da Pancrazio has two dining rooms, one under Pompey's theater with an impressive classic barrel vault. We'd eaten there two years ago so we opted for the more modern 18th century room this time. Our food was exquisite. Ira had the prosciutto melone, followed by the spaghetti all bottarge, which is a salty fish roe that you will have this winter as we bought some to take home. For the final course, he had the vitello tonnato, solid as usual. I started with the prosciutto di cervo (deer) that was rich and spicy. I followed with the ravioli carciofi, which may have been one of my favorite dishes of the trip. I'll be eating a lot more artichokes this year!

My last course was a fritto misto of calamari and shrimp, which was terrific. Not as good as al Covo in Venice, but so crunchy and light you almost forget it's deep-fried. We will try to go back, it was that good.

Tonight we go to a fancy place, so stay tuned for that meal.