Palazzo Madama

Today we went to Palazzo Madama, the large castle like palace in the middle of town. When. We arrived we went into the ticket office and paid to get in. Once we got our tickets, we went into a very large collection of medieval art, most of which was involving baby Jesus and Mary. One of my favorites was one of Jesus standing on Mary's lap looking like he was inviting the saints around him to a party. We then entered a small room full of stone things, most of which looked like they had been taken from buildings. There was also a large stone casket there. We then went to the stairwell to go up to the next floor. While going up the stairs we saw a plaque saying that the inside part of the two back towers were once part of an ancient Roman gate surrounding the city. It was built over in the Middle Ages, and then had the palace front put on a couple hundred years ago. On the top floor we saw some baroque art and then part of the treasure tower which had a picture of an ugly guy in it. We also went into some of the royal residence. We saw the queens bedroom, and some sitting rooms which had windows on two sides. these rooms were gorgeous, and i could have sat on the couch in there for a while. We also went into the large ballroom. It had an amazing floor and a frescoed ceiling. But the true standout part of this room was the sculpture perched on the walls, each was a pair of two women holding a different animal. We went up some more stairs to see the grand collection of dish ware. We saw all kinds of things, even jars and table centerpieces. We were very careful not to touch anything. The best part about this room though, was the views out the windows. you could look down some of the main shopping streets and see all the people and things, it was really cool. We then walked into a room displaying different clothes that might have been worn by the Savoys, whose palace it was. We left that room and went all the way downstairs to the archeological stuff. We saw some old mosaics and other things. We then went outside to the garden, which is where there was once a moat around the castle. The garden was nice, we watered some plants, ran around and got to see all the beautiful plant life in the garden. We left the garden after we finished messing around in one of the fountains. Then we headed back out of the museum and walked on the grand staircase which is free and open to the public. After that we headed out and after wandering in town for a while we went home, i'll post again soon.