Rome family vacation tours: the wonders of Rome

ROME FAMILY VACATION TOURS: THE WONDERS OF ROME

During your staying in ancient roman hotels you have to set out one day to see some of the "wonders" of Papal Rome. What bones and skulls and relics of all kinds are brought out. Who knows how many “genuine" nails from the Cross and how many pieces of its wood are proudly displayed by monks and priests in various churches. Rome has about 600 churches and each seems to live with the other to show the most amazing relic and tell the "best" story.

On the north side of the Piazza Barberini, at the beginning of the Via Vittorio Veneto, is the Church of the Capuchin Fathers. The little booklet one buys at the church assures us that here in this underground church-cemetery we are about to see a "unique work of art that will invite to prayer and meditation." We see a long underground passage divided into six arched compartments and the whole place stacked with bones. On the ground are great heaps of skulls, while on the walls and ceilings, laid out in all kinds of artistic compartments and the whole place stacked with bones. etc. What a sight! Here and there skeletons have been wired together and clothed with a monkish habit. Some of these are standing in rows or reclining in niches. The guide book assures us that the bones of 4000 priests of the order who died between 1528 and 1870 are piled up here in heaps on the floor or arranged in the strange designs on the walls and ceiling.

Rome tour guides can plan for you and your family customized sightseeing in the Eternal city

The priest on duty in the church sometimes show little plaster replicas of a skull, so I bought one to use as a paper weight, and went on out into fresh air and sunshine, wondering how in the world this macabre spectacle could possibly fit into the scheme of Christian worship as revealed in the gospel of Jesus. One more glance at the guide book as I moved away, and I noticed that Pope Urban VIII had had the soil of this place specially brought over from Jerusalem and Pope Pius VI granted Plenary Indulgence to the faithful who visit it on the first Sunday of October.

Bones seem to have quite a hallowing influence, according to the theology of Rome. The roman Pantheon, once a temple for sun-worship, with its great thirty-foot hole in the roof, through which the sun's rays shone during worship, was consecrated and became a Catholic Church simply by bringing twenty-eight cartloads of bones from the catacombs and burying them beneath the floor.

The Pantheon was dedicated in 27 BC. by Agrippa, friend of Augustus and victor over Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. In 608 A.D. Emperor Phocus and Pope Boniface IV converted it into a Christian church and dedicated it after the Virgin Mary and "All Saints." It still bears the name of Santa Maria Rotonda today. It was on the lst November of that year that the bone removal campaign was carried out and November 1 is still celebrated as the feast of "All Saints."
In Rome one is greatly impressed by the continuation of, and the similarities with, pagan religions that are to be found in the name of Christianity: that's why I always suggest to plan your family vacation much in advance in order to stay possibly longer in the capital of Italy.

top