Staycation: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!  Buon Feste!

Rome celebrates the end of the year in a big way.  There is a massive 24 hour party in and around Circo Massimo.  It all starts on New Years Eve with concerts, light shows, fireworks and crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands.  We aren't really crowd people so we celebrated at home with a few late night adventures in pyrotechnics and also watched the neighbors'.  From our balcony we could see a couple of pretty good displays.  We face the wrong way to see the fireworks downtown.  I think one of them might have been coming from Cinecitta.  Cinecitta (Movie city) is a movie studio turned amusement theme park, maybe a bit like Universal Studios.

I think it is an interesting side note that American celebrate the New Year and Italians celebrate the Capodanno, which can be translated as end of the year, but more literally the head of the year,  Is there some cultural commentary that could be made here?  I don't know.

The next evening we went out to explore the city a little bit.  The kids got tired so we sent them home on the Metro and John and I walked south along the river.  We started to see some cool things like lights and video projections on the sides of buildings including the hospital on Tiber island.  It was pretty cool.  We decided to check it out.  I didn't realize that the party was still going on from the night before.  It was perfect.  Enough people around to feel festive, but not so many that it was problematic.

By this time the concerts were over, but we still got to see some of the art displays and light shows.  We saw a couple of little mini parades of performers.  The first one we saw was fish and sea themed.  It was far off so I didn't get a good photo.  They were headed toward the building with the purple octopus tentacles growing out the side.

Then we saw a bird themed performance coming up behind us.  So impressive.

After the birds passed we followed the lights and flames up the Aventine hill and saw a spectacular view of the city.

This little street was lit with burning lanterns on one side and hanging paper lanterns around the corner.  There were still plenty of people, but something about the flames made it more subdued.  We walked up through the Gardine degli Arancia.  The view is just as spectacular at night and especially tonight with all of the lights.  The garden looked like a fairy land with the trees covered in lights.  There was a little platform with a piano available to anyone who wanted to play.  Perhaps there had been performances here earlier.  There was also a big glowing water bear/tardigrade.  I'm not sure what that was about.  It was very otherworldly.

Just outside the garden is the Basilica di Santa Sabina all' Aventino. (and here)  There were only a couple other people inside including the priest.  It was dark and quiet and beautifully spare.  So many of the churches are extremely ornate in the style of the 16-17th centuries.  This basilica was built on or near the site of a Roman temple to Juno.  The columns inside are said to have originally been part of that temple.

 These carved stone panels reminded me of Ireland and Celtic decorations.

You could put a coin in a machine to turn the lights on in the side chapels.  These were more richly decorated.

 The famous doors and one of the surviving mosaics.

It was a magical evening.