By Andy Omel

After a week’s worth of Ancient, I awoke this morning with a craving for Contemporary.

To get my fix, I ventured up to the Flaminio neighborhood to visit the Zaha Hadid-designed MAXXI Museum. The building itself was the star of the show: a concrete and steel spaceship filled with dramatically suspended walkways, gorgeous rectangles of sheet metal anchored to the ceiling, and a warren of contemporary art-filled galleries. And those galleries contained some gems. Giorgio Andreotta Calò turned an upstairs room into a giant pinhole camera, projecting an upside-down view from the museum’s giant picture window onto a gallery wall through a 3cm hole.

A sprawling and haunting piece by Doris Salcedo commemorated the 10,000 young people killed by the Colombian government between 2003 and 2009. And the entire second floor was devoted to MAXXI’s smartly-curated permanent collection.

When it comes to visual inspiration, I tend to crave variety. Sunday’s trip to the MAXXI was the perfect 21st Century palate cleanser before feasting again on ancient Rome, the Forum!