Yes, we are currently touristing far away from home, on our first ever visit to Italy. We are in Rome, having started in Milan and having visited Genoa (highly recommended just for hanging around in) and Florence.

As we didn’t do a mass of pre-trip planning, we are pleased with some of the serendipitous experiences we’ve had. Stumbling across the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan we saw both an amazing Carravaggio painting,

as well as the ‘cartoons’ (preliminary drawings) for Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ fresco. We saw the actual completed fresco at the Vatican Museums yesterday.

And while we had Museums like the Uffizi and the Vatican on our list, we weren’t always sure what we might ‘find’ when visiting.

One of my favourite ‘finds’ at the Vatican were the preparatory models, made of clay and straw, over iron armatures, of angels that were cast in bronze for St Peter’s Basilica. The models were designed by Bernini and to my mind, are as beautiful, if not more so than the finished works.

Thank you to the people who centuries ago decided that these were worth keeping.