Laocoön and His Sons

This is pretty much all you see in the Vatican Museums, I plan to go back off-season (if there is such a time) so I can actually pause and contemplate the pieces I want to see.

This is in the Cortile Ottagono in the Vatican Museums, a beautiful courtyard that was a welcome breath of fresh air on the way through the labyrinthine galleries, where I was stood admiring the sculpture when I was unceremoniously trampled by this marauding herd.

(The sculpture that's out of shot is Laocoön and His Sons and this enlargement is from a scanned strip of negs originally intended just for making a contact sheet, brightened up in photoshop; shot in June 2014 on Ilford FP4 with a 35mm f/2.4 lens)

Rome: Colour Contact Sheets

Vatican City:

 Florence:

Our last night in Rome, messing about with an expired roll of 35mm...

Rome: B+W Contact Sheets

In June this year I took a trip to Rome; an even though I took both my DSLR and a film SLR, every photograph I took there was shot on film, the images below were taken with a Canon Eos 5 (simply for it's built-in exposure meter), with my beloved Carl Zeiss 35mm f/2.4 lens and shot on Ilford FP4.

I've yet to make any enlargements of any of my photographs (although I hope to soon!), but for now here are the black and white contact sheets...

 

St Peter's Square, Castel St Angelo and along the banks of the River Tiber:

 

I'm a bit of an anorak and love railways, so I made sure we took the opportunity to ride the Frecciarossa to Florence:

 

On our final day in Italy we visited the Vatican Museums; friends recommended I pay extra to get a guide and skip the queues - I personally would advise against this, you save a lot of money if you arrive early and are prepared to wait, then you get freedom to roam around the museums without being in a herd, bumping into groups was always a nightmare and I was grateful to not be a part of one.

Colosseum:

Colour contacts to follow shortly!