The house has new carpet and vinyl flooring now and it looks pretty good. My big job now is to rescreen the back porch. The old screen and boards have been removed and are sitting in a pile in the yard.
Next job is to get new screen material stapled up. I hope to have most of that done by Friday, and then spend the weekend cutting and nailing in the boards to cover up the seams and make everything look pretty. Then I can start on the ceiling fans and getting appliances back where they belong.
Several of the houses that were rental properties on the street have gone on the market and sold fairly quickly, so hopefully we’ll have a similar result.
The Basilica seemed a little bit out of the way to me (probably because I wasn’t really paying a lot of attention to where we were going), but it wasn’t very far from a metro station and only a few stops from Termini.
The Basilica has the distinction of being the seat of the Bishop of Rome, who also happens to be the Pope.
The Bishop of Rome’s chair
The inside, like the previous Papal Basilicas, is very large, very grand, and beautifully decorated.
Inside St John Lateran
The impressively large baldacchino holds statues of St Paul and St Peter
Baldacchino at St John Lateran
Inside the baldacchino at St John Lateran
Along the sides are larger than life sculptures of the Apostles, with St Peter and St Paul closest to the altar.
Sculpture of St Peter in St John Lateran
Sculpture of St Paul in St John Lateran
We didn’t spend a whole lot of time here, and it was the last of the four major basilicas that we visited.
It’s been almost a month in the apartment now, and it’s time to move the rest of the stuff out of the house into storage. Tomorrow we rent a big moving truck again, load up the rest of the stuff stashed in the garage and move it to storage.
The kitchen has new counters, the archway into the former office and the door between the shack and the bedroom are both filled in, and the walls have a fresh coat of paint on them. The house is now a 4 bedroom (counting the room over the garage), 2 bathroom house as it was originally designed to be.
Next week the carpet and vinyl get replaced. While that’s happening, I’ll be re-screening the back porch and putting back the shelves that had to be taken down for painting. Then put the appliances back, a bunch of cleaning and the house goes on the market!
Going through the front entrance puts you into a nice little garden square with a large statue of St Paul in the middle.
Basilica of St Paul Outside-The-Walls
St Paul
Inside, the Basilica is very long, and like all the churches in Rome, beautifully decorated. On the walls just below the ceiling are mosaics of all the Popes, with the current pope lit up by a spotlight.
Inside the Basilica of St Paul Outside-The-Walls
Pope mosaics
Pope Francis mosaic
I counted about a dozen or so empty spots for future popes. Not sure what happens when those are all filled up.
In the Confessio beneath the main altar, you can see one side of St. Paul’s sarcophagus, and a length of chain that is supposed to have bound St. Paul.
The Confessio at St Paul Outside-The-Walls
Length of chain that bound St Paul
Tomb of St Paul
There’s also a gift shop/book shop here, a little cafe where you can get some food and drinks (including beer…how many churches can you say you’ve had a beer at?!). There’s also an archaeological dig/exhibit, but it wasn’t open when we were there. Looked like it would have been pretty interesting to go through. Near the Basilica is an archaeological dig of a necropolis which looked pretty interesting through the fence.
Definitely worth adding to the list of places to visit when you’re in Rome.
