From my View

I'm sitting in a bedroom of the Ercoli, staring out of the open window at the building next door. All of the buildings here have double shutters- one set on the outside; one on the inside. Our shutters- both of them- are open. All of my books are lying open next to me, as studying has taken up most of my day so far. But I needed a break, so here I am, typing out some musings about my stay in Rome.

1. There are NO road rules. There aren't even any lanes painted on the road... which makes crossing the road quite difficult. And fun. And most of the cars here are little hatchbacks, so you don't think they can do any damage. Wrong!

2. There are over 900 churches in the city. I think we visited half of them. I NEVER want to see another church. Sure, they're beautiful in the classical sense, but it gets boring. Plus, Christianity gets more and more underminingly fake the more of them that you see. I mean, most churches here are extremely wealthy and have been decorated in gold and silver and marble statues and BLING and it's easy to see why people would have wanted to join the church in the first place! But that's just my opinion.

3. The Roman people always think they are right and will never move out of your way, regardless of your dominant position on the sidewalk.

4. Gelato is not as delicious as it's made out to be. It's good, but I prefer other ice cream.

5. Men can either be sweet and polite... or creepy. One or the other. Not both; not neither. One. And most seem to think that being creepy is amusing.

6. Everything is closed on Sundays and Mondays. If it's not closed one day, it will be the next. And stores never adhere to their hours... it's whenever the employees feel like leaving. Same with the transit system- whenever they feel like coming to work, they do. When they don't, they don't. And they don't feel bad about it.

7. The Roman way is the right way. Period.



Hopefully more to come soon! I'm taking my last final tomorrow morning, and then it's my last night in the Eternal City...

One of the Last

Usually when someone hears "It's the last day of class," shouts of joy can be heard from the next town. But not here. No one wanted to hear Dr. Anderson's final lecture because we all knew it meant the end of a trip- the end of something that never can or will be repeated again. Our last day was spent at churches, catacombs, and ancient monuments alike, all of them ebbing and flowing from one to the next like they were built just for the sake of our classes. We began in the Catacombs of Priscilla, an underground labrynth stretching 8 miles long and holding 400 thousand bodies (incidentally, very few were left in the catacombs after excavation). We got to see Santa Maria Maggiore, one of the most important churches in Rome for pilgrimages. According to legend, the basilica plan was shown to the builder in the form of snowfall the next morning. Thus, every August 5, snow magically appears on the steps of Maria Maggiore. Bernini is buried here, which makes it that much more of an interesting place. But, I still stand by my thought that one you've seen six weeks of churches, you've seen them all. Sure, they're all beautiful and shiny, but give me dirt and tell me to dig it any day. We ended our day on the Janiculum hill, where the best overlooks of the city can be found. And it was there that Dr. Anderson read aloud a Latin poem about the city that brought everyone to tears. Okay, well, almost everyone.

And starting tomorrow, we get to use all of the knowledge we've accumulated over the past six weeks and take finals. Hence, ciao for now- studying is necessary!

Imperial Port City

Ostia- one of the most influential ports of Roman times, built around a community of upper-middle class citizens. Also the deathplace of St. Monica, the mother of St. Augustine, Ostia was a center of cultural transmission. Christianity and Mithraism (the cult of Mithras, somewhat of an eastern cult) were the two important religions; the latter being the earlier of the two. The site itself is a gorgeous one, with a good number of mosaic floors to attest to its wealth and prosperity. Something that's not found very often in Roman settlements is present here as well: a SINGLE LATRINE! One was very fancy and well to-do if he had his own latrine. Of course, there was a superb example of public latrines... pictures to come a little later.

My two favorite statues came from Ostia, neither of which I have a good picture due to their inaccessibility. Both are in the Ostia Museum, which doesn't allow photos because not all of the pieces have been published. One of these statues was of a city official, heroically nude, whose inscription was rewritten several times. The other was a cult statue of Isis with a snake wound next to her. Both were breathtaking (and I usually don't care for art).


I will put up some pictures a little bit later; for now we just have a short break until class begins again.

The Ceiling looks better if you squat...

It's officially my last week in Rome, and I'm realizing just how little I've actually written about in this blog. so from here on out I'm going to try to update once a day and write as much as humanly possible. But to be fair, the past two days have been my weekend, so not much of anything happened. Really just spent some time ambling down Roman cobblestone streets and doing homework. And the weather here has been rainy and cold, on and off, for about three days now.

This morning we got a HUGE treat- we didn't have class until 9:45 (as opposed to the usual 8:30), so I got an extra hour of sleep. AND the sun was out, an added bonus (as I'm writing this, it's gotten considerably cloudy and threatening rain.. can't have too much of a good thing)! First stop was the Baths of Diocletian, built around 300 CE on the Esquiline Hill for the exploding population of Rome. It was the largest of all the Roman baths, converted into a church in the 1500s under Michelangelo's oversight. The exterior of the church faces Piazza Repubblica and looks like a segment of a dome. The interior has the best faux-paintings I've seen during our entire trip (and I've seen a fair share)- for instance, there was an altar painted onto one of the walls that looked as if was real. It was only as I was leaving did I notice that it was a painting. Regardless, it was definitely one of my favorite churches...second to Santa Maria in Cosmedin.

S. Maria degli Angeli e dei Martiris

An hour-long bus ride later, we hopped off at the Vatican and toured/wandered around St. Peter's for a while. Since I had already been during mass, I had seen most of it, but I feel like St. Peter's is one of those places where new things crop up every time you see it. The Pieta is much smaller in person, by the way. The entire thing was beautiful, but it just made me curious as to why so many people over the past thousand years have converted to Christianity. St. Peter's is glistening with gold and shaking under the weight of its marble- what poor peasant who was starving would turn down a chance to be around all of that wealth (literal and figurative)? But it's just a thought.

View from seat at Mass, St. Peter's Basilica

Since we had such a short class period, a couple friends and I walked around the Vatican area and windowshopped. In Rome, it seems to me that you can either get Versace or buy something from a street vendor. There really aren't very many in-between stores, either for quality or price. But it's fun to go look around in, oh- I don't know- Tiffany's, where there are no price tags so you know everything is astronomically priced. The fact that finals are in just a few days made us head back early to study and nap... and update blogs. Side note: Apparently for lunch I chose anchovy pizza... let's just say I'm never coming near those things again. The smell alone is enough to knock out Mike Tyson.

Fried Chicken and La Dolce Vita

Last night, I met a man who loved fried chicken and sweet tea more than anything in the world. That's really the last thing someone would ever expect to find in the city of Rome, but we managed it. Ironic when the majority of our conversations now revolve around what we're going to eat first when we get home. Believe you me, the food in Italy is delicious- but very redundant and very little variety. There's always some sort of pasta and/or bread involved in every meal, and here at the Ercoli they seem to have something against non-gassy water. So, while we enjoy the food overall, there's just something magical about Chick-fil-A and Cracker Barrel that the Italians haven't caught on to yet.

For those of you who have seen ANY of the old movies filmed in Rome back in the 50s and 60s: be jealous. We got to briefly check out the movie production area and we were able to visit the Villa d'Este- the home of every famous movie fountain from those movies. And although I'm not exactly impressed by beauty, I will be the first one to admit that the fountains were all lovely. The natural air conditioning provided by interior fountains... superb. Hands-down best feeling of the day. And that came after our excursion to Hadrian's "Pleasure Villa" at Tivoli, the single largest expanse of rooms I've ever seen. A little-known fact: Hadrian loved architecture and actually preferred to design his own buildings. He built the villa with himself in mind; the outcome being a beautiful if not silghtly silly estate. The site is large enough that Hadrian was able to reconstruct famous locations, so really it seems to be like a Six Flags park- it's cohesive, but there are different neighborhoods to visit. My favorite was definitely the Canopus section... Canopus being a sacred area in Egypt that housed a few important temples.

And our adventure didn't stop there! After we were finished in Tivoli, we came back to Rome to check out the aqueduct lines first-hand. I think it's safe to say that the ingenuity of the Romans definitely equals that of the current society, if not surpassing it. The water piped in from nearby hills and mountains had to be kept at a miniscule downward angle so as to not wind up with no way to harness its power. So the aqueducts had to be designed and built PERFECTLY, with no mistakes in calculations. Amazing.

We also paid the Capitoline Museum another visit today to see archaeological remains from the later Empire. Instead of growing weary of it, statuary is becoming more and more endeared and interesting to me. Luckily the Romans didn't paint paintings (at least, not on canvas), because I honestly don't think I would ever be able to handle looking and contemplating hundreds of "masterpieces".


Final thought of the day is something I learned the hard way: Don't hang up things to dry outside of your window. It won't end well.

Countdown??

View from the top of Hadrian's Mausoleum

It’s World Cup season, and Rome is a hub of soccer… er, football. Everywhere you go there’s a sign for this or that football team, or an ad featuring a Roma player. So of course for the games we had to check out a local hotspot. There’s an official Fifa viewing screen set up at the Villa Borghese park in north central Rome, about a 5 to 10-minute walk from us at the Ercoli. It is AWESOME. We’ve been to about 5 games there, but the most epic game has definitely been the Italy//Paraguay game. There were thousands of people there last night, and all of them were cheering for Italy (the Paraguay fans wisely chose to stay home, I guess). The crowd though- that was the real fun for me. Everyone was so pumped up and so invested in their country doing well that it was difficult not to get swept up into the fever. When Paraguay scored their goal, I have never felt so much frustration and anger from so many people at once. But that just made Italy’s goal that much sweeter and fulfilling. Even though it ended in a tie, it was more than worth it.

As far as classes go, there are less than two weeks left and it’s starting to hit everyone that this may be the last time they see so-and-so’s monument, or the last time they have to eat green tomatoes for dinner. So these last two weeks are definitely going to be milked for all they are worth. Yesterday we headed to Ostia (the port of Ancient Rome) to check out the ruins there, then today we spent quite a few hours walking around the southern Campus Martius. The Pantheon was one of our stops during the day, and it took me quite by surprise. I was not expecting what I walked in to see: a modern church in a giant round building. I was disappointed yet again that another ancient monument was taken over by the Catholic Church, but on the other hand grateful because if it were not for the Church (and Pope Pious IX), then much of ancient Rome would not still be available to us. But it was beautiful nonetheless, and the oculus was really neat. Hadrian’s Mausoleum (called Castel San’Angelo by Romans) was our last stop for today’s class. Originally built to be Hadrian’s final resting place, Castel San’Angelo was actually turned into a castle during the 10^th cCE. It also housed all of the remains of the emperors until Caracalla in the mid-3^rd cCE, but none of these still remain. The only thing left of the burials is the burial chamber itself, which you can’t actually go into. But we faithfully climbed up the ridiculous Roman stairs (really just a steep winding terraced ramp) to the top and got a gorgeous panoramic view of the city.

Only 1.5 weeks left… mama, mia!

Return to (normal?) Life

It’s true that even in Italy you need a vacation from vacation. Class today was a welcome reprieve from the excursion to Campania, even though the last two days has been spent frolicking on the beaches of Positano. Though I believe the last week or so deserves a little bit of discussion! We set out for Campania on Friday morning at 7, taking a Mercedes-Benz charter bus (who knew they made those? Not me) to the site of Paestum, along the Bay of Naples. Paestum is the place to go if you want to see some of the best examples of Greek temples in the world… because who would purposefully go to the middle of southern Italy to destroy some temples? We began our tour of the town in the local archaeological museum, which housed mostly building fragments in various forms of preservation. Then we traversed the actual site, on which there were 3 temples (2 main ones). They were astonishing in how well they were preserved and how complete their histories were. After a refreshing run through the rain onto the bus (note sarcasm), we headed back to our hotel, Motel della Misteri. We stayed literally at the foot of Mt. Vesuvius and directly next to Pompeii and the nearby Villa of the Mysteries (hence our motel). A joke that got thrown around more than once was “We’re probably going to get buried by the volcano while we sleep, just fyi.” But we made sure that if we did indeed get covered with pyroclastic flow, we would at least have gone swimming in the amphora (vase/urn) shaped swimming pool. And we did.

Temple of Athena at Paestum


Saturday was spent looking at a town decimated by hot gas and small volcanic pebbles. Nothing is left above the 1st floor in Pompeii because the pyroclastic flow wiped out everything above 10-15 ft, which gives an eerie feeling to the entire town. What makes it even more creepy are the plaster casts of the victims of the eruption. There’s a crouching person, covering his face; a tethered dog straining to get off his leash; and the most impacting- a man in obvious pain with the back of his skull and his toe bones actually intact. His face is contorted in a horrible grimace, and you can actually see the outline of teeth. Very surreal moment. The rest of the city (or should I call it a necropolis?) was very interesting and fun to look around, and I can see how a week at the site wouldn’t be enough to see everything. Later that night we went to the Villa at Oplontis, once owned by Nero’s second wife Poppaea. Luckily it was closed during the eruption, so no remains found there.

Cast at Pompeii

The early sun of Sunday saw us leave Pompeii and head for Naples, where we spent the morning in the archaeological museum. Lots of great statuary, frescoes, and art- all housed in the Palace of the Bourbon kings. But we couldn’t linger in Naples because of the ridiculous crime rate of the city (one of the highest rates of murder in the world), so we hopped a train to Sorrento, and then a bus to our vacation spot in Positano. After negotiating the local buses- which is rather difficult when no one speaks enough English or Italian to communicate effectively- we finally made it to Hostel Brikette, our home for the next two days. These were technically vacation days, but I have never been so tired in my life. The town is situated on the side of a mountain and overlooked the Bay of Naples, so it was absolutely breathtaking. However, the climb down to the beaches was a killer… imagine climbing Tallulah Gorge about 3 times each way, and you have the climb. We spent the days on the beach and taking in the scenery, and the nights attempting to sleep on the worst beds in the world (no more hostels in my future, no matter how cheap!). But it was, all kidding aside, the most astonishingly beautiful place I have ever seen.

View of Positano from beach

After all of that traveling, class today was a great break. We got to see Santa Maria del Popolo- the church that houses the “Demon Hole” and the Chigi Chapel from Dan Brown’s Angels and Demons. It was AWESOME to imagine all of that happening in the very place I was standing. Other highlights of today were Caesar’s Forum (not much left) and the Ara Pacis- the monument dedicated to peace, built by Augustus. It makes absolute sense that not much would be left of these buildings, but there is so much standing here that it makes one wonder why houses from the 1800s are so difficult to come by in the States.

"Demon Hole" of the Chigi Chapel


One thing I will miss when I come back: the abundance of blood oranges.