It's amazing what we stumble upon...

On Friday, Amanda and I had a lot of extra time. We went to school to complete the Permit to Stay procedures (so we can stay in Italy and travel to other countries)...we thought we would be there for a few hours, but we ended up being done in about 20 minutes!

With all our free time, we decided to take the Metro down to San Giovanni. We had heard there was a market there, and we were in desperate need of rainboots. After successfully making our purchase, we decided to walk around the area and explore a bit, especially because it was such a gorgeous day! We came across this beautiful basilica in the piazza up the street.



We sat on a bench outside for a bit, ate lunch, and journaled, then decided to walk around and just take pictures. As we approached the basilica and went inside, we learned that it is St. John Lateran, which was actually the seat of the papacy for several centuries until the Vatican was built! Charlemagne was even baptized here in the 8th century. (I'll spare you all the history lesson here...but just know it's a history major's heaven.) :)

I knew it would be hard to explain in words how massive this building is, so this picture was the best way I knew how to show everyone. That's me standing next to one of the bases of a column!


This is the porch of the basilica...in a sense, the foyer. The audio tour we took said that this was designed help the people prepare for worship before they entered the main sanctuary.


Amazing. (I don't think any more words are necessary!)





We're still not quite sure how we just stumbled across one of the most important buildings in the history of Christendom, but I'm pretty sure I can get used to this. :) I'll be putting together a slide show soon to display more pictures, so these are just some highlights.

Ciao for now!