Today we had a shorter day. We walked over to the Aventine hill (one of the seven) and went first to San Theodore, which is a Greek Orthodox Church in Rome. It is one of the oldest churches in Rome and was in the land that was primarily Greek people. St. Theodore was a soldier under Diocletian when Rome was trying to purge the legions of Christians because they were against the pagan gods. The commanders required that everyone sacrifice and St. Theodore refused. However, since he was so young, they asked him to reconsider and gave him a few days to think about it. In that time Theodore burned down a pagan temple. He was then martyred in February 17th, 306. People now bring their sick children to this church for healing.
Afterwards we walked by the Circus Maximus. The next place we went to was Santa Prisca, which is another Title Church. This could be the site of the house of Prisca from the New Testament, and which would have been a place where Paul and Peter came. This house/church was possibly built on the site of a Mithraum. The church itself was very basic.
After that we headed towards Santa Sabina (another Title Church) which is one of Jim's Top 5 Churches. Sadly there was a movie being filmed in front of the church so we couldn't get in… so I will save those notes for another day. Instead we went to the park around the back and overlooked the Tiber and the city. HBO Rome Note: We saw the area where the main characters would have lived down by the river.
After the nice view, we walked over to Santa Maria in Cosmedine. This church was given to the Greek Christians when they came to Rome after persecution in the east over the discussion of icons. The most well known thing about this church was the Mouth of Truth out in front of the church. If you have ever seen the movie Roman Holiday this may come as a reminder. You put your hand into the Mouth of Truth and profess your love. If it is a lie then the mouth will bite your hand. Really though, it is just a sewer cover that has the face of a god on there (probably Neptune).
From there we saw the Forum Boarium which has 2 temples, one is round and the other is rectangular. The round one is a temple to Hercules Victor and was the center for the olive trade. The rectangular one was to either Fortuna or Portuna (unknown) and was the center for flower trade. They are very well preserved amazingly.
After that we headed back to the hotel for a few minutes and then some of us took the opportunity to visit the Galleria Borghese in the Villa Borghese. This was our first opportunity to ride the bus and it was an adventure. Right now the Galleria is having a Caravaggio and Francis Bacon exhibit (Bacon wasn't much to see but the rest was cool!) We saw some Bernini's and Caravaggio's. Overall it was worth they extra few euros to do.
After that we did a little shopping and dinner and then went back to the hotel and went to bed.
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