Downward Spiral

Donato Bramante's spiral staircase in the Museo Pio-Clementino, Vatican...

Via here

Sten and Lex

Aren't these fantastic? The extraordinary work of Italian Street artists based in Rome - StenandLex...

Via here and see videos of art in progress here

A Big Week for the Vatican...

Cardinals have set Tuesday as the start date for the conclave to elect the next Pope...

Image via here

Brigitte Bardot (I)

Brigitte Bardot arriving at Rome's Fiumicino Airport, 1961. Photograph by Patrick Morin
Via Nowness

Roost

Discovered the most exquisitely photographed blog during one of my regular blogosphere binges. The food styling is practically celestial - each photograph looks like a 17th century Dutch still-life oil painting. Coco, the author and photographer, has a wonderful sensibility. Makes one want to leap into this delectable world for a loooooong time, and demand to be fed. Not stalking yet, but super close...

See what I mean? Of course, the photographs from a trip to Italy (Ode to Italy) induced pure unadulterated wanderlust...

 All photographs by Coco from Roostblog

Forced Perspective

Francesco Borromini's Perspective Colonnade was built in 1660 as an amusement for the courtyard of the Palazzo Spada. Assisted by a mathematician, this is a fascinating example of an optical illusion in which diminishing rows of columns and a rising floor create the visual impression of a gallery 37 meters long (in reality, it barely measures 8 meters) with a life-size sculpture at the end of the vista. Believe it or not, the sculpture is only 60cm high. In fact, it is so low-ceilinged at the far end, that only a child could stand upright...

Photographer Danilo Scarpati

Photographer Rita Gram

Palazzo Spada

Photographs from here, here and here