Let’s split this into a few posts. First, pics from Rome. Keep in mind that this was our first trip to Italy, so this is Italy 101.

Your scribe arriving in Rome last Thursday morning on roughly one hour of sleep. This day consisted of a lot of bleary-eyed wandering around the area near our hotel.

Trevi Fountain

The Victor Emmanuel monument, commemorating the unification of Italy and constructed in the 1800s. My friend Patrick derided its “fascist aesthetic.”

The Pantheon, one of the architectural marvels of Rome, built around 125 A.D. under Hadrian. Later converted from a Roman temple to a Christian church. Unfortunately, you can’t actually see the dome, its most distinctive feature, in this picture.

Piazza del Poplo. The obelisk in the center, which is obscured by the scaffolding for some work they’re doing on it, was taken from the Egyptians by Augustus in 10 B.C.