We left our accommodation at 10:00 and headed to Centrale station. On the way we bought a potato crocchè and a frittatina di pasta.

At the station our platform number wasn’t showing yet, so we tried them. Both tasted so bad that we threw them away. Definitely yesterday’s old stock.

Caro looked after the bags while Hugo went to look for a different breakfast. He came back with a very average toasted cheese and tomato sandwich. It filled the hole, but it wasn’t great.

We got on the train. 11:20 to 14:35. Next stop Rome. This trip was luckily not as eventful as the previous one.

We took the metro to Valle Aurelia and reached our accommodation at around 15:15. At the metro stop we walked straight past our first sightseeing spot without knowing it: La Vecchia Fornace Veschi. It is the last of the brick kilns that once filled this valley, which was known as the Valle dell’Inferno — the Valley of Hell — because of all the smoke. Seventeen or eighteen of them worked here, supplying Rome with bricks; this one shut down around 1960 and its chimney is still standing right in front of the station.

Hugo did a bit of work. Then at 17:00 we headed to the Vatican and queued to go through security into St Peter’s Basilica. It is the largest church in the world, it took 120 years to build, from 1506 to 1626, and the dome is Michelangelo’s.

St Peter's Square at dusk with the obelisk, the basilica and Michelangelo's dome

Michelangelo's Pietà behind glass in St Peter's Basilica
The gilded coffered vault of the nave of St Peter's seen from below

Bernini's Chair of St Peter with the alabaster window of the Holy Spirit above it

A papal tomb set under gold mosaics in St Peter's

Bernini's tomb of Alexander VII, with its folds of red marble drapery

Bernini's bronze baldacchino and its twisted columns beneath the dome of St Peter's
Caro standing on the marble floor of St Peter's among the markers naming other cathedrals

There was a service while we were there. It was very nice to hear the organ music.

Caro dwarfed by the columns of the basilica portico
Two Swiss Guards in striped uniforms on duty at a gate beside the basilica

We came out as the sun was setting and headed in the direction of Castel Sant’Angelo. We stood there looking at the river and all the crowds, and listening to artists playing music in the street.

The front of St Peter's Basilica lit by the last of the evening light

We have been having a food and restaurant conversation with ChatGPT for a big part of this trip. In every city we ask it for recommendations that fit our criteria. It’s a hit and a miss. Tonight it suggested a small takeaway pasta place. There isn’t a big menu, it is very reasonably priced, and there is one chef. If you get one of the four tables, the food is served on paper plates with throwaway cutlery. We had gnocchi with bolognese sauce and carbonara tagliatelle, and a tiramisu. It tasted a lot better than some of the expensive places we have eaten at.

Gnocchi with bolognese on a paper plate with a wooden fork

Carbonara tagliatelle on a paper plate
A tiramisu in a plastic tub with the first spoonful taken out

After dinner we walked to Piazza Navona. The square is that long oval shape because it sits on top of the Stadium of Domitian and simply kept its outline; the big fountain in the middle is Bernini’s Fountain of the Four Rivers.

Then past the Pantheon, which is nearly 1,900 years old and still has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world, with the hole in the middle open to the sky.

Caro beside Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers in Piazza Navona at night
Caro under the columns of the Pantheon portico at night

Hugo and Caro in front of the floodlit Pantheon at night

And then to the Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola, with an impressive painted roof. The ceiling is flat. Andrea Pozzo painted the architecture carrying on upwards from where the real walls stop, so the whole church appears to keep rising and then open straight into the sky. There is a yellow marble disc set into the floor marking the exact spot he worked the perspective out from: stand on it and the ceiling lifts, walk a few metres and it flattens and goes crooked. He played the same trick over the crossing, where the dome is also just paint on a flat surface — they had run out of money to build a real one.

Andrea Pozzo's painted ceiling in Sant'Ignazio, the architecture soaring into the sky
The painted false dome at Sant'Ignazio, which is in fact a flat ceiling

By this time we were giving giant yawns, which meant it was time for bed. We headed to the bus stop and home.