There are kids in Rome!

We enjoyed stunning weather on Sunday and after hearing a 60-voice choir from Georgia and joining them in "Holy, Holy, Holy" at church we strolled through Borghese Park. We saw more children in a few hours than we had the entire month previous. We searched for a flea market that we never found but had a happy encounter with an American couple as they paused for lunch from their daylong bike ride along the route of a certain aqueduct. She is a fellow this year at The American Academy in Rome but normally works in historic preservation in Manhattan. He's lived in Rome for 45 years and teaches architecture for Penn State's Rome program. He did his graduate work at U. Penn in the late 1970s. On Saturday we visited the San Clemente church, which actually is a series of churches, one on top of the other. At the highest level is a Catholic church with beautiful mosaics in the apse, very much like those in Ravenna. In the courtyard you see mismatched columns, obviously taken from other buildings (there are parts of the Colosseum in structures all over Rome--an early example of recycling). You descend down into what is an active archaeological site to make out parts of earlier churches, sarcophagi built into the walls and such. Finally at the very lowest level sits an altar to the Persian god Mithra. It's very dark and spooky and a girl holding flowers was there with us. I was afraid she was going to put the flowers at the altar but fortunately she didn't. Thanks for the comments on the "Sacrifice of Isaac" entries. Ghiberti's entry won the competition and he went on to design the doors. His work was considered more balanced in terms of space, with the curve of the bodies, the rock's surface and Isaac's torso beautifully rendered. Brunelleschi's entry was notable for its sense of urgency, the angel darting in at the last minute to stop Abraham. Despite this loss, he became one of the most important architects of the Renaissance and designed Florence's signature dome.