Visiting the museums in Rome

During the week, museums are free entry due to Rome’s birthday. I didnt know about this till I was surfing through a couple of links through Italytutto who has really nicely scoured through the internets and organized it nicely in one page. I looked at my calender and saw that we only had a few days left! Oh gosh, better later than never!

Anyway, the first museum that we stepped to was the museo nazionale delle arti e tradizioni popolari – translated, it means Museum of folk arts and traditions.

One of the first things that I saw was this humongous thing called the Giglio di nola. One of these are easily more than 5 times the height of an average human and for sure extremely heavy. For the rest of the year, it will be kept in the church but once a year there is this tradition to carry and parade it.

But it was a symbol of devotion and honour to carry these. Men who carried them were considered an equivalence of rock stars.

Another version of this is the Ceri di gubbio. Its smaller sized but its heavy anyway and they race across the square to be the first person to reach the church. Woah. It looks totally backbreaking.

It looks crazy! But I’d love to see this in real life. It must have been an experience :-)

We then stepped into another room where we saw potteries and clothes worn by ancient Italians. This one for example, was worn by a married woman.

I really liked this outfit. I’m not sure if you could see it in the picture, but the design looked fab and the jewellery is smashing! I bet I’d totally be rocking in this one.

As a sidenote, I was a little nervous at taking pictures but since there were so many people flaunting the rules, ah well. I join in too. Respectfully of course. With no flash. Not like the unlearned people who blinded the cats with their incessant flash at the cat show.

There was a room where we saw different types of traditional outfits according to the regions in Italy. Regions up north looked more nordic while the regions down in the south looked more mediterranean.

Anyhow, this is what traditional Rome outfit looked like.

Cart said that the biggest way to recognize it was through the square buckle on the shoe. It was a very recognizable trait.

There was another room where we entered where there was a lot of traditional toys like these ones. The marionettes below are called i Pupi siciliani. I think this devil puppet looks pretty cool with his three fingers up like that. Its kind of like saying, Hai there!

Cart keeps saying that these puppets were mediterranean inspired. I’m sorry but it looks INDIAN! To me! The moustache and the turban. They are sikhs!

Besides, look at the L’infiorata. Its the same tradition of using coloured grains to make a pattern of the floor. That’s an Indian tradition too during Deepavali!

Speaking of which, Italians have this game called the trottola. How come it looks so similar to the Malay Gasing? You all copy from us one

Anyhow, we walked to another segment where there is a diorama where Italians traditionally used to live in. This is one of them. The people took advantage of the materials from their region to make their own unique houses.

I didnt take more pictures as I would have liked to though, there were just too many people for me to take pictures secretly.

This is probably the biggest nativity scene that I’ve ever seen.

I liked seeing the buildings in them. Its like a really huge dollhouse. Cart tells me that it was a reflection of how the people used to live in the times. Not sure if it is clear in the picture, but you could totally spot the baby jesus even from far on account of the flying angels above it.

I just noticed a security camera while editing this picture. Spy Rinaz Fail!

And this display below was interesting to me.

Traditional street food sellers. Its quite fascinating to me how similar the tools are like with the streetfood utensils of the Singapore past. Like the first item on the left totally looks like a satay burner complete with the fan. Speaking of satay, how I’d go for some sticks right now …

Anyway! Later on we then passed by a room where there was a Korean display on how to make their intricate boxes with decorative patterns made of shells (if I am not wrong). It just seem so out of place in an Italian museum, but it was interesting to see anyway.

And thats when I thought, it would be cool to have a collaboration with the Singapore Museum! Walter! Any chance of collaborating with Singapore museum with Italian museum? :-P

We scoured through 3 floors full of exhibit and at the end of the day, my feet were so sore and tired that they pulsated all the way home and I fainted on the bed when we reached home.

Day Two, Sunday

The next day, Cart and I headed to the Museo Dell’Alto Medioevo after visiting Parco Laghetto Eur. But that’s for another blog post altogether.

This was the museum where they showcased medieval things. I was keen to see what was inside there. The unfortunate thing is that when we reached there, it was closed for the day! I was quite upset! But Cart jokingly said that, no matter, we still had the next year :-P

In any case, we then headed to the museum which was right next to it. To be honest, I wasnt feeling very optimistic but we gave it a try anyway and thankfully, the Museo Nazionale Preistorico Etnografico (phew, that was kind of challenging to type) was open!

At the moment, the exhibits were divided by different continents.

The first that we headed to was Africa and we saw different types of masks, weapons, outfits and such. One of the unforgettable ones was an African mask which was like 15 stories high. According to Cart, the higher it was, the easier it was for them to reach to heaven.

I took this picture above because I found the story interesting that there was a Muslim influence in Africa. This was one of the artefacts and Cart was translating to me that the long piece of wood at the back, which had verses written on it was used to dip in water and the water was used for healing.

This is another picture I sneaked in when no one was looking

This is how a Somalian woman looked like on her wedding night. It just struck me because Somalia is one of poorest countries in the world. But the woman in the picture looked decadent. So much has happened between then and now :(

Next we entered the America section where we saw plentiful of old relics, some were Aztec and Mayan. Its a savage culture, where human sacrifices are expected of them. I remember a pottery where a sacrificial scene was depicted. The man wielding the sword looked even happy to do so.

This one is kind of eye brow raising because its a musical instrument made of REAL HUMAN BONE!

I wonder if anyone have the stomach to play that in real life now, being aware of what it was made of.

And doesnt the picture below look so cute?

Quite adorable really, with surprised face and all. But Cart explained that if you see this, you should run away as fast as you can because it is a club! And it will hit you to death! Uh oh.

The next segment that we headed to was the Ocean Pacific and it was interesting to see them making use of the items around them for their use.

No really! Look at the hat. Its made of a puffer fish. And the sword next to it is made out of a sawfish. So super cool!

The last area that we went to was the prehistoric segment where we walked up a heck load of steps and when we finally arrived, we saw displays to see how society evolved from the first primates and throughout the different ages, bronze age, iron age.

By this time, I was feeling quite tired after walking around so much that we sit down to rest our feet in front of a display of human evolution.

And all of a sudden, there was this super friendly Italian woman who kept chatting away. Touching the glass display as if she was Vanna White on Wheel of Fortune. And when the display did not light up, she sat next to me and continued chattering.

I dont understand what she was saying but I didnt want to seem unkind because she seemed so friendly so I just smiled stupidly back at her. So I asked Cart later on.

Me : What does “Spaventoso” means?

Cart : Where did you hear that?

Me : The woman sitting next to me, she kept saying that word

Cart : Spaventoso means scary!

Me : Oh! I was wondering that! She was so chatty, but I didn’t know how to reply to her.

Cart : Just smile and nod your head :-P

In anycase, thats about it. After walking so much, my legs really felt like it was coated with rust and I could hardly walk anymore. The museum is actually a lot larger than I thought, judging from the outside! But we did enjoy ourselves. Whee!

I’m looking forward to attend the next ones :-D

To end, I will put up a picture that doesn’t really go in the blog post.

No, this man isn’t spaventoso. But he was showing us how to make a large container out of clay, just like how it was in the ancient times. Or just like how I did, while I was back in secondary school

If you liked this post, you might enjoy :

• Racing at the Singapore Museum
• Mint Museum – Singapore
• Museum of Shanghai Toys