Early Thursday morning our whole program woke up and loaded our things onto the bus for our trip to Rome. I slept for the first half of the ride and entertained myself for the second half with a book and my iPod. All in all I think it took about four hours. As we got into the city we ate some bag lunches and shortly thereafter stopped at our hotel to put away our things. I shared a room with my normal roommates. After a short break at the hotel we all reassembled in front and started walking toward the Vatican. Our hotel was really well located in an area that was equidistant from the Vatican to the east and the Coliseum area to the west, which made it relatively convenient. Unlike many of the cities I’ve gone to Rome is a bit spread out and has the world’s worst subway so there is a little bit more walking involved.
We approached from the front of St Peter’s Basilica and then cut off to the side to follow the giant wall around to the entrance to the Vatican museums. We went inside, got through security and started exploring the museums. As expected they had a rather extensive collection of ancient statues that were lost and then rediscovered in Rome. We also toured around the Rafael Rooms (spending time specifically on the School of Athens) and then the Sistine Chapel. I didn’t remember this from the first time, but this time I noticed that in the Sistine Chapel the painted figures surrounding the biblical scenes actually look 3D when you see them in real life from the right angle. It actually makes the entire ceiling much more impressive in real life.
I’d seen all of this stuff before, but it had a much more specific significance due to both my art history class and the knowledge I have picked up in Europe. This semester has, more than anything else, helped to give me some context for art, architecture, and history that I didn’t have before. It has also helped me to be able to actually determine what is going on in a painting or sculpture without being given its full history.
After the museums we made our way to St Peter’s and after waiting in line for a little bit we went inside. It was very grand inside and included some really good statues including La Pietà by Michelangelo. After wondering around there for a bit we headed around and paid to climb the dome. It was 551 dizzying, disorienting steps, but eventually we made it to the top after spiraling staircases and long stairs around the perimeter with slanted walls. We had a view of the entire city and it was a little bit cramped and precarious feeling up there.
Once we gathered back at the base a group of us went to Piazza Navona (I was of course once again the navigator) near our hotel and got some gelato. Then after hanging out there for a while we went back to the hotel and got ready for dinner. I had planned to go with my roommates to find some Korean food, but the group grew to be too large and the walk too far so I grabbed (literally in one case) a few people and we staged a secession. Instead of a 40-minute walk for Korean we had a 5 minute walk for Chinese. At this point we were all excited for some non-Italian food so it was a nice meal. Afterward we walked around and explored various dessert options for a while until we decided to go see the Pantheon.
We took some pictures in front of it and then went to see the Trevi Fountain. Once we arrived we found the remainder of the group from which we had separated and rejoined them. We all hung out there by the fountain for a while until we eventually all headed back to the hotel.
The next day we woke up and had a decent breakfast in the hotel before heading off with the group to the Capitoline Hill, one of the original seven hills of Rome from which we derive our word ‘capital’.
This hill was the citadel of ancient Rome and home to the ancient Tabularium and the Temple of Jupiter. During the medieval period it became the seat of power in Rome and fell under papal control. The Piazza del Campidoglio at the top was designed by Michaelangelo during the Renaissance and still serves as a civic center of Rome today. At the top of the hill we met a tour guide who took us on a nice lengthy guided tour of the Roman Forum.
We spent several hours starting with the legendary founding of Rome by Romulus and Remus and working our way through the centuries and emperors of the Roman empire. Luckily for us, in Rome when they wanted to build something new they didn’t demolish buildings and monuments, they simply covered them up with dirt, raising the street level and starting over. This process is well represented in the Forum where we can see the literal layers of time. The lower levels stop mostly around the 1st century and Julius Caesar’s time I believe (though older layers still exist below them). You can also see many buildings that were remodeled and repurposed. The only reason many temples survived raids on Pagan structures is because they were converted into churches. Accordingly we can see modifications in many of the buildings like medieval brick adjustments added to ancient stone. The other really interesting thing about seeing the ancient pieces in the Forum is that we see the things from which Renaissance artists and architects (that we have studies at length) took their classical ideas. Many 15th century churches in Florence and the rest of Italy share common features like the triangular pediment purely based off converted Roman Temples. In class we’ve studied how certain artists took Roman designs like the triumphal arch and designed them into buildings, so it was cool to see the sources and inspiration for so much architecture now that I have an appreciation for it.
Of note, while we were ascending the Palatine Hill towards the end of the tour we observed 11:11 on 11/11/11, which was very exciting. We all made wishes and whatnot. We finally ended the tour in front of the Coliseum where we were given a brief profile of the whole gladiator scene. After the tour most of us headed into the Coliseum to take a quick look around.
It’s actually a bit of a shame how deteriorated and gutted the Coliseum is. If it hadn’t been picked apart for iron and stone then it might actually be a bit more impressive and while it is still a very cool monument it could be so much better. Tis sad. After the Coliseum most of us grabbed lunch and afterward I wondered around the city with Ali and Morgan. We passed Hadrian’s Column and then headed back toward our hotel and saw the Spanish Steps, which actually are not very impressive since they’re just stairs. Then we meandered back toward the hotel passing the Trevi fountain and looking in stores and scoping out places for dinner. We also got some gelato that was less than great. During our wondering we found ourselves ending up back on the same street a couple of times and then eventually straightened ourselves out and found the hotel.
I wasted a bit of time at the hotel and later met back up with a group to go to dinner. After scoping for a while we settled on a nice little place where I ended up with spicy spaghetti of sorts. After dinner we went back to the hotel and some of us hung out in our room for a while. A little later we went to a bar and had a drink after which I returned and went to bed.
The next day we checked our bags at the hotel before breakfast and I headed out with a small group to see the Mouth of Truth. For those that are rusty on what that is, perhaps this picture from “Roman Holiday” will jog your memory.
We walked along the Tiber for a little ways and then turned off into a piazza and found it. We took our obligatory pictures and then left to go see Circus Maximus.
We knew it was basically a big field, but we went anyway and once we arrived we sat there for like an hour because I think we were all a bit tired. Eventually we got ourselves up and went to have lunch. I had a very nice pizza. After lunch most of our program went on a guided tour to Villa Borghese. I stayed behind and decided to get a haircut. So I walked around and chose the first open place I saw. I went in, they said “cut?” said “si”, showed them a picture, and let them do the rest. Very thrilling. After my haircut I went back to the hotel and we got on the bus and after picking up the people at the Villa Borhese we headed back to Sesto.
Rome is a pretty interesting city because it is very divided in many different ways. While a city like Florence has a pretty concentrated history of significance, Rome is much more broad. Many of the important things in Florence and other cities can roughly be attributed to a given time period. Florence was pivotal during the Renaissance while somewhere like Berlin is filled with 20th century history. Roman history is much older and more complex and it is reflected in the nature of the city. While in Florence we can walk around and see tons of buildings that were build in the 143th to 15th centuries, in Rome you have buildings that were built a century BC, medieval buildings, and buildings from the Renaissance. Furthermore due to Rome’s place as seat of the Catholic Church for so many centuries we get an influx of ideas that were not prevalent other places in Italy like Gothic and Baroque architecture. The city itself is literally stratified into levels based on the age of some of the monuments because all of Rome is built on top of filled in layers of ancient Rome. When archeologists finally got interested in history in the 19th century they had to dig down to uncover all the ancient ruins that had previously been buried and built over. Rome’s long reaching history and changing importance from the center of ancient power to the center of the Catholic Church to the center of modern Italian government has given it a very mis-matched geography and appearance that makes it pretty unique.
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