Le Chiese

In Rome, you cannot swing a dead cat around without hitting a few churches and you would hit even more people objecting to you killing cats. There are almost 1000 churches in this city and the past couple days have been completely filled with church visits mainly because there is free entry.

In order to have a pleasant visit, you must follow these rules whilst inside:

1. Cover up. It is a well known fact that Jesus had shoulderkneephobia which in layman's terms means the Messiah had a big aversion to body joints back in the day. Why do you think His eyes are always closed in depictions on the crucifix? If He looked left or right He'd see his shoulders, and if He looked down He'd see his knees. So out of respect for the Savior's little idiosyncrasy, visitors must wear conservative clothing.

2. Be quiet. A church is filled with people praying, confessing, and trying to figure out how much gold was used to create the tabernacle and how many countries in Africa could have been fed with that money, so telling a joke to your fellow tourist is not tolerated. The docent will come up to you and tell you to shut your mouth in 5 different languages.

3. Don't use flash. Take the time to figure out your camera and set it to museum mode. If your flash goes off, the same docent will come up to you again and shout in a load whisper to turn it off, and then possibly threaten to smash your camera into little bits in another language, although I don't speak french so he could have said anything.

4. Pay attention to the floor. Just because you're not out on the cobblestones anymore does not give you an excuse to look at the guilded or painted ceilings while walking around in the church. Because there are random steps, tombs, and various mosaics on the floors and you could really embarrass yourself in front of the other tourists and the priest saying mass while tripping over one or more of these things and making involuntary noises of surprise and alarm.

If you follow these simple rules, you should have a good visit especially since most Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque art has religious themes and are in churches.