The Pantheon and Dar Poeta

As I mentioned, on Tuesday we went to the Coliseum in the morning and got a little wet before buying some umbrellas. We continued on to check out the Pantheon, which wasn't too far away. With Amanda's trusty guidance, we found our way there without any trouble and darted inside just as another rain storm started up. The Pantheon is an ancient building that was used in pagan rituals including animal sacrifices and what not, however it was converted to a Christian temple when Christiantity took over. It's a huge cement dome with a large hole in the roof, through which smoke from ritual fires was able to escape. Currently, the temple holds a number of Christian statues and paintings. It's quite neat inside, although hard to take pictures because it was quite dark.
Here is a picture from the outside. The square is quite nice and has a pretty fountain in the middle.
We stopped for lunch just outside the Pantheon and had a nice meal with slightly more "North American" style food, which gave us a break from some of the different Italian foods we were encountering.
Again, I returned to my conference in the afternoon and also attended another poster session, this one where I stood by my poster and discussed my research with a number of scientists who came by interested. I was quite happy with the interest in my poster and spent nearly an hour and a half talking to consecutive individuals about my project. Not only was I glad that there was interest, but I also garnered some interesting ideas to put to use in my research, so it was quite valuable time spent. After the poster session, my supervisor Lorne came for dinner with my family and we went to a little pizza shop Amanda knew of called Dar Poeta. This place was tricky to find and was the complete opposite of anything touristy, but they had good pizza and a great atmosphere. We had a nice dinner and took this picture afterwards: