Crime Writer in Italy: Week Three--AH, Roma

 Words are unnecessary to tell the glory of Rome.  The pictures below will give you a tiny taste.  But I will tell you a story at the end--a very brief and funny one.  In the meanwhile all you need to do is look a these:

Church View

The River Nile

Here's the story I learned in school:  In the center of the Piazza Navona is Bernini's Baroque masterpiece, the Fountain of the Four Rivers.  Evidently, there had been a competition to build the Church of Sant'Agnese in Agone, which you see in the church view above.  Bernini entered the competition, but the commission was given instead to his rival Borromini.  Bernini was asked instead to design and sculpt a fountain for the center of the piazza.  The statue representing the river Nile faces the church.  If you look carefully, in the center of the church view you can see the statue's hand raised.  The gesture is plain in the front view of the statue representing the River Nile.  Bernini's statue raises his hand to protect himself from the church when it falls down, since it was built by the winner of the competition who was, by Bernini's reckoning, an inferior architect!

When this blog goes up, we will be flying home.  It's been a cultural and culinary delight to be here.