A Country Girl in Italy: The Rome Temple

2020

Because we are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, having a temple in Rome is very exciting, and a must-see on any trip to Rome. We visited Rome in 2018 when the temple was still under construction, and have been back to the temple twice since that time. The most difficult thing about visiting the temple is getting there. You cannot reach the temple by metro, and it is confusing to reach it by bus (although it is possible, we have done it). We usually end up renting a car or taking a taxi. On our next visit I am going to try Uber.

The temple is beautiful and so is the visitor's center, which displays a Christus statue as well as statues of Christ's 12 apostles. There are interactive exhibits as well, for children and adults, in the visitor's center.

The Rome Italy Temple, my 40th Temple, in 2020

inside the visitor center

a replica of the temple

beautiful stained glass in the visitors center

the death masks of Hyrum and Joseph Smith were on display in the visitor's center when we were there in 2020.

inside the visitors center at the Rome Temple

the 12 Apostles

Petrus

Jacobus

Johannes

Andreas

Philippus

Bartholomaeus

Thomas

Matthaeus

Jacobus

Judas Thaddaeus

Simon Zelotes

Paulus

James and I at the Christus, 2018

outside the glass of the visitor center

on the grounds of the Rome Temple

The House of the Lord

Angel Moroni

view of the visitors center from the temple

walking the grounds of the Rome Temple

on the steps of the Rome Temple

sunset at the Rome Temple

My first son to serve a mission for our church, Micah, was called to serve in the Italy Rome Mission. This was during the time that the Rome Temple was being built. They made lots of progress on the temple while he was there, but then President Uchtdorf went to visit the temple and said that it was not up to the standards that it should be for a House of the Lord, so they started over. They wanted to make it perfect, and they did, but it took much longer than expected. It was not completed when Micah returned home from his mission. It was still not completed after Micah got married and we returned with him and his wife to tour his mission. We went to see the progress they had made on the temple. It looked nearly completed. Then, for our 25th wedding anniversary in 2020, James and I flew back to Rome and attended the completed and dedicated Rome Italy Temple! We toured the Visitor's Center where they have a Christus and statues of all of the twelve apostles, and many other things that are worth your time to see. We saw a friend of ours from Monticello Utah, who happened to be serving a mission there. When we arrived at the temple, I didn't realize that I'd lost my public transit ticket (it must have fallen out of my pocket when I got out of the taxi) until after my endowment session. By then it was night and the temple would soon be closing, so I was pretty worried. But a very kind temple worker gave me a bus pass that she happened to have and we were able to safely ride the bus back to our termini stop. We did an endowment session. At first they were going to do the session in English, because everyone who was there spoke English. But then they had some more people come and decided to do it in Italian, so we wore headphones. I admit I took my headphones off for a large portion of the endowment because I wanted to listen to the endowment in the beautiful Italian language. We were very blessed to be able to visit the Rome Temple for our anniversary, and especially considering that all of the temples in the world closed shortly thereafter because of COVID.

We returned to the Rome Temple in 2024 and this time brought my mom with us. We were able to tour the visitor's center before doing a sealing session with my mom and several other people. Our sealer spoke English, as well as Spanish and Italian. Some of the people who attended our session only spoke Italian, so they ended up splitting the session. I plan to return to the Rome temple in 2025!