December 7, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

Not far from the ancient Pyramid of Cestius, behind the Testaccio Post Office, is Piazza Albania. It received this name in 1940, one year after the annexation of Albania to the Kingdom of Italy. In the park facing the piazza is an equestrian monument to Giorgio Castriota Skanderberg, the 15^th-century national hero of Albania. (It is the work of sculptor Romano Romanelli.)

December 6, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

Today the search for horses in Rome takes us to the National Museum of Oriental Art. This museum is an interesting collection of Eastern artefacts from the Middle East to Japan, ancient to modern, and many addenda to the collection because of Italian archeological exploration. You can find many interesting representations of horses. These are just a few.

The Museo Nazionale d'Arte Orientale is not far from the main train station in Rome, Stazione Termini. Via Meruluna, 248.

December 5, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

Horses and carriages can often be seen carrying riders around the historic center of Rome.

Piazza Venezia

Via del Corso

December 4, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

Mosaics with horses in the Ostiense Train Station:
The Ostiense Train Station replaced and earlier rural railway station with the aim of creating a monumental station to receive Adolf Hitler in 1938. The black and white mosaics on the floor commemorate various themes and legends of Rome's history.

December 3, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

Piazza Navona: There are three fountains in Piazza Navona, the square built above the 1st-century AD Stadium of Domitian. Horses are part of two of these fountains.

Bernini's Fountain of the Four Rivers (1651) has a horse emerging between representations of the Ganges River and the Nile River

 Fountain of Neptune designed by Giacomo Della Porta (1574) has three seahorses frolicking in the water that were added by Antonio Della Bitta in 1878.

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December 2, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

At the top of the step leading to the Campidoglio and the stature of Marcus Aurelius we encounter the twins Castor and Pollux, two mythical horse tamers. The statues are ancient Roman copies of 5th-century BC Greek originals.

December 1, 2014: Horses in Rome Advent Calendar

For the first day of December we go to the center of Rome on the Capitoline Hill. In the Piazza Campidoglio designed by Michaelangelo is what is probably the world's most famous equestrian monument, the 2nd Century AD statue of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius, seated on a Hungarian horse. Depicted without weapons or armour, Marcus Aurelius seems to be a bringer of peace rather than a military hero, which is how he saw himself.

Today a reproduction is the the piazza, while the original is housed in the adjacent Capitoline Museums. It is the only surviving bronze statue of a pre-Christian emperor to survive, only because it was originally thought to be Constantine, the first Christian emperor.