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We saw some strange things while on this walk.  You wonder who writes the building codes.

It was interesting to see ancient Roman columns seemingly used as supports for contemporary structures.

At one point in our walk we cross the River Tiber, and it doesn't look like something you'd want to go swimming in. 

This is the bridge where we crossed the Tiber.  There were lots of bridges that crossed the river, both for cars and pedestrians

It looks like a pretty slow moving river.  There are cafés all along its banks.

We can see the dome of St. Peter's as we crossed the Tiber on our way to the Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona is Rome's most interesting night scene, featuring street music, artists, fire-eaters, local Casanovas, ice cream, fountains by Bernini, and outdoor cafés to die for.  It is an oblong square that retains the shape of the original racetrack that was built around A.D. 80 by the emperor Domitian.  Since ancient times the square has been a center of Roman life.

This is the Fountain del Moro on the South end of the Piazza Navona, which has a basin and four Tritons sculpted by
Giacomo della Porta (1575) to which, in 1673, Bernini added a statue of a Moor, or African, wrestling with a dolphin



   Why do birds love to perch on marble statues?  If you can answer that, we may have a solution to the problem.



           Although the birds do add a certain amount of character and charm to the fountain. 
           The guy on the far side, without a bird on his head, looks positively naked.  LOL



   At the North end of the Piazza Navona is the Fountain of Neptune (1574) also created by Giacomo della Porta.



  From 1652 until 1866, when the festival was suppressed, the Piazza Navona was flooded on every Saturday and
  Sunday in August in elaborate celebrations of the Pamphilj family.  August is normally a very hot month in Rome.



             Pete finds a place to refill our water bottle . . .



  . . . and I find my future car.  I'm beginning to want something to buzz around town in, and this looks perfect.



   The Four Rivers Fountain in the center of Piazza Navona is the most famous fountain created by the man who remade Rome in
   the Baroque style, Gian Lorenzo Bernini.  Four river gods (representing the four continents that were known in 1650) support
   an Egyptian obelisk.  The water of the world gushes everywhere.  The Nile has his head covered, since the headwaters were
   unknown then.  The Ganges holds an oar.  The Danube turns to admire the obelisk, which Bernini had moved here from the
   stadium on the Appian Way.  And Uruguay's Rio de la Plata tumbles backward in shock, wondering how he ever made the top
   four.  Bernini enlivens the fountain with horses plunging through the rocks and exotic flora and fauna from these newly
   discovered lands.



   And now we leave the Piazza Navona and arrive at the Pantheon.  From the outside it looks quite plain to me.
   The holes in the triangular pediment once held a huge bronze Roman eagle.  The columns are 40 feet tall and
   are made from single pieces of red-gray granite.  They were taken from an Egyptian temple.

The granite columns of the Pantheon's entrance show the scale the ancient Romans built on.  The columns support a triangular Greek-style roof with an inscription that says "M. Agrippa" built it.  In fact, it was built by Emperor Hadrian, who gave credit to the builder of an earlier structure.  This impressive entranceway gives no clue that the greatest wonder of the building is inside―a domed room that inspired later domes, including Michelangelo's St. Peter's and Brunelleschi's Duomo (in Florence).

The Pantheon, Rome's best-preserved monument, has engineers today still admiring how the Romans built such a mathematically precise structure without computers, fossil fuel-run machinery, or electricity.  The Pantheon was a Roman temple dedicated to all (pan) of the gods (theos).  The original temple was built in 27 B.C. by Augustus' son-in-law, Marcus Agrippa. In fact, the inscription below the triangular pediment proclaims in Latin, "Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucio, three times consul made this."  But after a couple of fires, the structure we see today was completely rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian around A.D. 120.  Some say that Hadrian, an amateur architect (and voracious traveler), helped design it.

In the next chapter we will take you inside the Pantheon, and explain more about the amazing construction techniques used in the creation of this fantastic building.