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| window at Harrods |
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| West Minster |
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| Metope of the Parthenon! |
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| Elgan Marbles |
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| Alex and Sierra |
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| Erica and I at Birmingham! |
Monday, October 25, 2010
Fall Break Photos
London and Amsterdam
Waking up under a warm duvet cover on my own accord (not because of an alarm) in pure darkness actually happened on the morning of Sunday October 17th … It was finally not just a daydream. I checked my iphone time – 9:45 AM – and opened the curtains to the bustling Euston Street in the northern half of the city London. Forty-five minutes later I saw a familiar face walk into the lobby of my hotel and was thrilled – Erica, my close friend from Cornell!! She came to spend the day with me in London from the U of Birmingham (just an hour and a half train ride North), where she is abroad interning and taking classes.
My first starbucks coffee since September 4th – that grande pike blend with soymilk, was like a healing elixir to the ulcers I am developing from the strong Italian espresso. Erica and I ventured out to the nearby King’s Cross Station and took the tube (I was a newbie to this), which landed right below the legendary Harrods – Heaven. Sorry, I have to succumb to my inner fashionista for a sentence, to give you a visual of my chosen outer apparel. Margaret’s old Burberry trench, a pseudo-denim Louis Vuitton scarf (thank you Cookie), and Via Spiga riding boots - Vogue would probably have even given me two thumbs up. We walked through the labyrinth-like gourmet food booths and treat isles on the first floor and made our way up to the designers. Delightful. Made me feel like I was on a typical marathon Newbury/Saks day out in Boston with the two loves of my life – my mom and Clara – with a sushi lunch snuck in between. Erica and I walked the area around Harrods called Knightsbridge, then headed to view Buckingham Palace and the Parliament houses where we took Blair and Serena style photos on the fountain in front of the palace. After frolicking around London all day, we devoured some take out (drumrollllll here it is ahhh) sushi and wine, and then I proceeded to watch crappy TV for the night and fell asleep early. This was my first day doing something non-academic and leisurely since the beach at Santa Mirinella back in the second week of September. As my dad likes to say, this day was a recharging of the battery.
The next morning I met Alex and Sierra (her close friend who is abroad in London) after another Starbucks healing session at the British Museum, where we scrutinized the Elgin marbles for some time and walked through the collection. Alex and I not only impressed Sierra with our knowledge about everything – but also ourselves. The collection featured Etruscan tombs, terracottas, red figure pots from Southern Italy, temple metopes, mosaics and more – and I knew so much about them. It felt great. We had a lovely lunch at le pain quotidien – a chain that has arrived in NYC recently, and I had a goat cheese salad with roasted veggies and Alex and I split an order of hummus. That evening at 5 PM I boarded the train bound for Birmingham to spend the night and next day with Erica to experience life like a British college student (thanks dad for helping me out when I forgot the sheet with her address on it). She made dinner for me and it was a special treat – warm baguette, smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumbers. How English. She arranged a party at her flat for me so I could meet her new friends – they were great and so entertaining – and especially to my treat some others abroad at U Birmingham from Cornell showed up as well. It was a great mini-trip, we went to a club that night and then had a nice breakfast/ talk session before I headed back on the train to London. Later in the week I would be meeting her in another country for a weekend excursion, so it wasn’t a final goodbye.
For the next two days I spent some time on my own and with Alex exploring London. We hit the National Gallery, and then on our last morning in town, Westminster Abbey. The National Gallery certainly lived up to its reputation. The curatorial work/organization is genius (although I was slightly irked that they displayed da Vinci works in a room with the Milenese artists and not Florentines – small details), and the museum was incredibly comfortable especially compared to some of the bootleg archaeological museums in random places in Italy. Sigh… one day I would like to work in a place like the National Gallery … pieces and artifacts, the fruits of their masters, deserve such treatment. Westminster Abbey was really interesting as well. This is no ordinary church. It definitely has the prerequisites for what makes a church cool – innovative baroque architecture, a menacing façade, an ornate high altar painting, large side isles with chapels and several successive rooms marked off by barrel vaults basilica style in the central knave. Within this building there are also hundreds of memorials to figures from British culture from many historical time periods. The abbey features niches that contain gigantic tombs of the early 14th century kings, ornate sarcophagi for each member of the Tudor Family including Elizabeth I, a poet’s corner with tombs and plaques for the masters (Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Shelley and Keats, etc.), statues for Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, and a chapel and several monuments for the British soldiers of wars from all of the centuries (culminating with World War II). Coming here was yet another indication of how much I have learned at ICCS – I could see how nearly every structure within Westminster has a Roman origination and name it precisely.
- the long effigies on tombs explaining the life of the deceased – these were also featured on and read during Roman funeral processions
- the fact that the effegies were in Latin (this could be due to Christianity as well because it embraced the Latin Language)
- ornate sarcophagi with highly detailed reliefs and figures on top in some cases
- the cloister outdoors where the monks would hang around – an atrium/peristyle possibly
- the basilica floor plan
We had a brief fiasco getting to the Gatwick Airport – the driver we hired to take us did not show up on time, so we had to boot it to the express train (it would have been around the same price since there were three of us) but we got there with plenty of time and as our pilot said, “took a quick trip over the north sea.” This fleuct (flight) was rather bumpy but not too bad, and we made it to the low country and I easily found Erica in the airport. Erica and I took our time storing my bag and figuring out the train situation for getting into the city. It ended up being very simple, we took an express train to the central station and then caught a tram line to our hotel. I was rather disoriented because the Dutch language is so far from anything I have ever heard or studied. It took us some time to find the hostel, but we eventually did. We made the gorgeous guy at the desk, who I learned is named Lloyd, show us our room before we paid. I have never stayed in a hostel before, and this was the first time I picked out a hotel/hostel in a foreign country, so I was a bit nervous that I had failed. I had looked online a few weeks before and tried to figure out Amsterdam and the best region to stay in, and this hostel fell in the perfect location – near all the Museums, a safer area of nightlife in the city, and some nice stores. Thankfully, it ended up working out well – we had a two bedroom private room with two lockable lockers, a strong outside lock, at a quiet location in the building, and our own bathroom. Not to mention the beds were nice. Some of the folks staying there were slightly sketchy and not our scene (they hung out together in a communal room downstairs, weird) – I guess there’s a large traveling culture and hostels are a way to meet other people from places across the globe –
but there were a lot of regular people at the hotel too, even kids and families.
Erica did a great job of keeping me on my toes this trip – she knew how to be safe (Amsterdam and most major cities are places where you have to be on your guard). She taught me many tricks. When we were trying to figure out where to go after getting off the tram at 10:30 PM, she pulled me into a Burger King and told me to be careful about talking out loud outdoors about where we were going, reading a map in public, or asking anyone questions because we could be followed (there were a lot of foreign men out on the move near where we were). The road to our hotel was slightly long and the tram didn’t go on our road, so we got a little concerned about location, but in the end decided it would be an ok place to stay. When we were out and two men offered to buy us drinks, Erica also made me realize that it was 100% necessary to watch the entire process like a hawk (the making of the drink, the paying, and the handing over) to make sure nothing was getting slipped in. She has been a wonderful person to travel with, and it feels so nice to share this experience with someone who I know well.
We had fun the first night as we checked out the nearby nightlife and hung out with some locals. The next morning we went to the Van Gogh Museum which was wonderful – it took me some time to recall what I had learned in Professor Bernstock’s Intro to Modern class freshman year – but then it came back to me. Also to my treat the museum contained a couple Monet’s and Rembrandt’s. We ate a falafel lunch at a place where the woman was cutting the vegetables for her salad bar, frying the falafel, and refilling the condiment bottles of tahini spicy (DEADLY) green pepper in front of us. She let me have seconds on vegetables because she saw me spoil my first scoop with the poisonous topping. Afterwards we did the Heineken Experience (this didn’t make me like beer), which was neat, and then relaxed and went out at night again. After a big pancake brunch (mine was banana with cinnamon ice cream and strawberry sauce), we went to the Anne Frank House. I can’t believe that eight people lived there for three years and barely went outdoors or saw sunlight. The memorial is nice, not too eclectic, but obviously a sobering experience. My third grade autobiography project was on Anne (I read an abridged version of her diary). Her story is how I first learned about the Holocaust. I remember thinking to myself when I was a little girl that one day I wanted to go see where she hid from the Nazis. I also remember my mom telling me she did when on business in Amsterdam when I was in middle school. So there it is – I accomplished one of my hundreds of long-term aspirations.
Tomorrow I am returning to Roma for the next three weeks. It is going to be a lot of work. Before we go on our next week-long Fabio bus excursion I have two oral presentations to prepare (I am already half way done with one), an art history midterm (already made my study guide), and another Greek take home. BUT I am so excited to start learning about the empire!! Goodbyeee Republic, its been a great time. The first week back is dedicated to me and only me – Emperor Augustus. So stay tuned for more, and I promise I will continue to wow you with my studies and adventures in the second half of my time overseas in the Italian lands.
Love and Kisses
Isabella.
My first starbucks coffee since September 4th – that grande pike blend with soymilk, was like a healing elixir to the ulcers I am developing from the strong Italian espresso. Erica and I ventured out to the nearby King’s Cross Station and took the tube (I was a newbie to this), which landed right below the legendary Harrods – Heaven. Sorry, I have to succumb to my inner fashionista for a sentence, to give you a visual of my chosen outer apparel. Margaret’s old Burberry trench, a pseudo-denim Louis Vuitton scarf (thank you Cookie), and Via Spiga riding boots - Vogue would probably have even given me two thumbs up. We walked through the labyrinth-like gourmet food booths and treat isles on the first floor and made our way up to the designers. Delightful. Made me feel like I was on a typical marathon Newbury/Saks day out in Boston with the two loves of my life – my mom and Clara – with a sushi lunch snuck in between. Erica and I walked the area around Harrods called Knightsbridge, then headed to view Buckingham Palace and the Parliament houses where we took Blair and Serena style photos on the fountain in front of the palace. After frolicking around London all day, we devoured some take out (drumrollllll here it is ahhh) sushi and wine, and then I proceeded to watch crappy TV for the night and fell asleep early. This was my first day doing something non-academic and leisurely since the beach at Santa Mirinella back in the second week of September. As my dad likes to say, this day was a recharging of the battery.
The next morning I met Alex and Sierra (her close friend who is abroad in London) after another Starbucks healing session at the British Museum, where we scrutinized the Elgin marbles for some time and walked through the collection. Alex and I not only impressed Sierra with our knowledge about everything – but also ourselves. The collection featured Etruscan tombs, terracottas, red figure pots from Southern Italy, temple metopes, mosaics and more – and I knew so much about them. It felt great. We had a lovely lunch at le pain quotidien – a chain that has arrived in NYC recently, and I had a goat cheese salad with roasted veggies and Alex and I split an order of hummus. That evening at 5 PM I boarded the train bound for Birmingham to spend the night and next day with Erica to experience life like a British college student (thanks dad for helping me out when I forgot the sheet with her address on it). She made dinner for me and it was a special treat – warm baguette, smoked salmon, cream cheese, and cucumbers. How English. She arranged a party at her flat for me so I could meet her new friends – they were great and so entertaining – and especially to my treat some others abroad at U Birmingham from Cornell showed up as well. It was a great mini-trip, we went to a club that night and then had a nice breakfast/ talk session before I headed back on the train to London. Later in the week I would be meeting her in another country for a weekend excursion, so it wasn’t a final goodbye.
For the next two days I spent some time on my own and with Alex exploring London. We hit the National Gallery, and then on our last morning in town, Westminster Abbey. The National Gallery certainly lived up to its reputation. The curatorial work/organization is genius (although I was slightly irked that they displayed da Vinci works in a room with the Milenese artists and not Florentines – small details), and the museum was incredibly comfortable especially compared to some of the bootleg archaeological museums in random places in Italy. Sigh… one day I would like to work in a place like the National Gallery … pieces and artifacts, the fruits of their masters, deserve such treatment. Westminster Abbey was really interesting as well. This is no ordinary church. It definitely has the prerequisites for what makes a church cool – innovative baroque architecture, a menacing façade, an ornate high altar painting, large side isles with chapels and several successive rooms marked off by barrel vaults basilica style in the central knave. Within this building there are also hundreds of memorials to figures from British culture from many historical time periods. The abbey features niches that contain gigantic tombs of the early 14th century kings, ornate sarcophagi for each member of the Tudor Family including Elizabeth I, a poet’s corner with tombs and plaques for the masters (Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Shelley and Keats, etc.), statues for Isaac Newton and Charles Darwin, and a chapel and several monuments for the British soldiers of wars from all of the centuries (culminating with World War II). Coming here was yet another indication of how much I have learned at ICCS – I could see how nearly every structure within Westminster has a Roman origination and name it precisely.
- the long effigies on tombs explaining the life of the deceased – these were also featured on and read during Roman funeral processions
- the fact that the effegies were in Latin (this could be due to Christianity as well because it embraced the Latin Language)
- ornate sarcophagi with highly detailed reliefs and figures on top in some cases
- the cloister outdoors where the monks would hang around – an atrium/peristyle possibly
- the basilica floor plan
We had a brief fiasco getting to the Gatwick Airport – the driver we hired to take us did not show up on time, so we had to boot it to the express train (it would have been around the same price since there were three of us) but we got there with plenty of time and as our pilot said, “took a quick trip over the north sea.” This fleuct (flight) was rather bumpy but not too bad, and we made it to the low country and I easily found Erica in the airport. Erica and I took our time storing my bag and figuring out the train situation for getting into the city. It ended up being very simple, we took an express train to the central station and then caught a tram line to our hotel. I was rather disoriented because the Dutch language is so far from anything I have ever heard or studied. It took us some time to find the hostel, but we eventually did. We made the gorgeous guy at the desk, who I learned is named Lloyd, show us our room before we paid. I have never stayed in a hostel before, and this was the first time I picked out a hotel/hostel in a foreign country, so I was a bit nervous that I had failed. I had looked online a few weeks before and tried to figure out Amsterdam and the best region to stay in, and this hostel fell in the perfect location – near all the Museums, a safer area of nightlife in the city, and some nice stores. Thankfully, it ended up working out well – we had a two bedroom private room with two lockable lockers, a strong outside lock, at a quiet location in the building, and our own bathroom. Not to mention the beds were nice. Some of the folks staying there were slightly sketchy and not our scene (they hung out together in a communal room downstairs, weird) – I guess there’s a large traveling culture and hostels are a way to meet other people from places across the globe –
but there were a lot of regular people at the hotel too, even kids and families.
Erica did a great job of keeping me on my toes this trip – she knew how to be safe (Amsterdam and most major cities are places where you have to be on your guard). She taught me many tricks. When we were trying to figure out where to go after getting off the tram at 10:30 PM, she pulled me into a Burger King and told me to be careful about talking out loud outdoors about where we were going, reading a map in public, or asking anyone questions because we could be followed (there were a lot of foreign men out on the move near where we were). The road to our hotel was slightly long and the tram didn’t go on our road, so we got a little concerned about location, but in the end decided it would be an ok place to stay. When we were out and two men offered to buy us drinks, Erica also made me realize that it was 100% necessary to watch the entire process like a hawk (the making of the drink, the paying, and the handing over) to make sure nothing was getting slipped in. She has been a wonderful person to travel with, and it feels so nice to share this experience with someone who I know well.
We had fun the first night as we checked out the nearby nightlife and hung out with some locals. The next morning we went to the Van Gogh Museum which was wonderful – it took me some time to recall what I had learned in Professor Bernstock’s Intro to Modern class freshman year – but then it came back to me. Also to my treat the museum contained a couple Monet’s and Rembrandt’s. We ate a falafel lunch at a place where the woman was cutting the vegetables for her salad bar, frying the falafel, and refilling the condiment bottles of tahini spicy (DEADLY) green pepper in front of us. She let me have seconds on vegetables because she saw me spoil my first scoop with the poisonous topping. Afterwards we did the Heineken Experience (this didn’t make me like beer), which was neat, and then relaxed and went out at night again. After a big pancake brunch (mine was banana with cinnamon ice cream and strawberry sauce), we went to the Anne Frank House. I can’t believe that eight people lived there for three years and barely went outdoors or saw sunlight. The memorial is nice, not too eclectic, but obviously a sobering experience. My third grade autobiography project was on Anne (I read an abridged version of her diary). Her story is how I first learned about the Holocaust. I remember thinking to myself when I was a little girl that one day I wanted to go see where she hid from the Nazis. I also remember my mom telling me she did when on business in Amsterdam when I was in middle school. So there it is – I accomplished one of my hundreds of long-term aspirations.
Tomorrow I am returning to Roma for the next three weeks. It is going to be a lot of work. Before we go on our next week-long Fabio bus excursion I have two oral presentations to prepare (I am already half way done with one), an art history midterm (already made my study guide), and another Greek take home. BUT I am so excited to start learning about the empire!! Goodbyeee Republic, its been a great time. The first week back is dedicated to me and only me – Emperor Augustus. So stay tuned for more, and I promise I will continue to wow you with my studies and adventures in the second half of my time overseas in the Italian lands.
Love and Kisses
Isabella.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Sicily VS Isabel
Now that I have finally caught up on sleep and the 40,000 emails I could not answer for an entire week, and done some reflection, I am ready to blog.
On Friday October 16, bright early per usual, we departed from the centro, this time however carrying massive suitcases and backpacks that we would be living out of for the next 9 days. I have put in a map of Sicily below just so you can see the extent of the excursion. We traveled south of Naples on Day 1, worked our way back to Naples by the end of day 2 to take an overnight ferry to Palermo, and then on arriving in Sicily made a circle of the entire island heading east first.
Day 1 (Friday) – Velia (An Archaeological Site south of the Amalfi Coast)
Day 2 – Paestum (Also south of the Amalfi Coast), overnight ferry from Naples
Day 3 – Cefalu, Taoromina
Day 4 – Syracuse
Day 5 – Piazza Armerina and Morgantina (violent food poisoning)
Day 6 – Agrigento and Selinunte
Day 7 – Motia, Segestum
Day 8 – Monreale, Palermo, overnight ferry from Naples
Day 9 (Saturday) - home
So now you are probably thinking what the heck were we doing in Sicily, and you probably haven’t heard of a single one of the places I just listed besides Palermo the home of il Padrino. Let me give you an abridged version – basically, Sicily and Southern Italy (aka Magna Graeca) were hotspots for Greek and Phoenician colonization in the 7th/6th BC because of their strategic location from an economic point of view. Each colony on Sicily is in a well thought out location, often near a good freshwater source and with visible natural defenses). Often times Sicilian Colonies (poleis) were third generation of their mother country (people from a colony would start their own colony). The Phoenicians were the near eastern people from modern day Syria, the colony you probably know them best for is Carthage. The colonies had their own disputes and wars, for example Selinus VS Segestum. Often times the disputes weren’t based on whether they were Carthaginian or Greek, they related back to the intricate alliance system of the Greek city-states themselves. By the time the Romans stepped onto the scene, there was a show down of Rome VS Phoenicia (via Carthage). This struggle was an atrocity – 3 wars, each lasting for over 10 years (The Punic Wars). Sicily, especially in the first Punic War, was the main theatre of operations and stage for the battles of both sides. Eventually all of Sicily’s city-states came under Roman power and the island became the first technical Roman province by the mid second century BC (not entirely provincial – some of the city-states retained independence so long as they stayed faithful to Rome during the War). After the Romans, the Visigoths arrived, then the Byzantines, then the Arabs, and then the Normands. Each conqueror built its own style buildings and, so basically to the modern day viewer, visually Sicily is a cultural cluster-f__k (pardon my crude language, that term just is so perfect).
We spent our week in Sicily hanging out at the ancient acropoli (the political/social/religious centers of the ancient colonies that have similar features) and temples, which are incredibly well preserved. The sites were peaceful for exploring due to the lack of tourism and it being off-season (opposite of the Vatican on any given day in the month of July).
The sites we visited thus had features of Greek and Carthaginian (the material culture still mixed due to trade between one another) city-states, and Roman elements like those we have been studying all semester. The fact that I could easily recognize the Romanization within each archaeological site and spit out very specific architectural jargon makes me realize just how much I am learning at ICCS. For example at first glance I could say something like “that temple is a hexistyle peripteral doric temple sine postico with two columns in antis, a tri-part cella, an adyteron and an optholomos.” Don’t even try to understand any of this, I am just trying to impress you.
I could go on and on about the individual histories of each town/site that we visited, but instead I have chosen a few highlights of the overall trip both academic and not, and organized them in a 10 part list.
Number 1: Roommate control and my special eggplant cestini
Basically the second day of the trip was Cait-y’s 21 bday, so we celebrated the night before our departure from Rome. She was sick on the bus the next morning, so I assumed it had to do with her celebration. Scott had specifically warned us that he has a sixth sense for hangovers, so we hid Cait-y under cars at the first rest stop so she could get it out of her system. It wasn’t until the afternoon that we realized she had motion sickness and not a hangover.
Hail my favorite chef at the centro, Maria! I took so much eggplant to my face at dinner the night before our departure from Rome that Maria added eggplant leftovers to my bagged lunch. She finally figured me out… I never respond to her cries “ancora pasta???!!!!” (more pasta) when she comes into the dining room after our primo piatto with an extra dish. For this girl its ancora verdura (vegetables)!! It was phenomenal!
Number 2: Our first Franco surprise.
So the director of the program Franco joined us on the trip as master of ceremonies via the microphone on the Fabio Bus. Brief digression, “Fabio Bus” is what Franco called the bus. Fabio was also our bus driver, and by the way, is quite the versatile driver. He handled the winding narrow roads of the mountains by Tauromina and Piazza Armerina and the busy and fast paced city roads in Palermo. Fabio just hates vomit (to his great displeasure there were several incidents of motion sickness on the bus) and is a clean freak (this was actually good because the bus was impeccable all week). Anyways Franco would greet us every morning on the microphone and each time we arrived at a destination with, a, “Ciao ragazzi, put on your good walk shoes, later today we have a Franco surprise, eeeesomething very special.” This first surprise came at the end of day one after we autopsied the site of Velia all afternoon in the beating sun. Thankfully, our hotel was on the beach and we were treated to a Mediterranean swim! The beach was lovely – nice, calm waves – and it was sunset so the skyline was a combo of warm colors and pinks. Not to mention the house wine at dinner that night was only 5 euro a bottle and sweet, just the way I like it.
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| Nerva is alittle too excited for the Franco suprise. Walking to the Beach! |
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| Rosanna and I in front of one of the temples at Paestum! |
My mom always told me tales of her overnight ferry rides from Newfoundland when she went to boarding school and college in Nova Scotia – the boat rides were miserable, smelly and teaming with nasty truckers. Those three words basically sum up my experience on the Tirrhenia, except the truckers spoke Italian instead of newfie. Unfortunately, Franco didn’t advise us to plan ahead and buy food for the journey, so we ate in the dining buffet area with the Italian truckers. Liz, Alex and I sat down at a table in a relatively open area and within 15 minutes we were surrounded on all sides by tables of them. They were making cat calls and being audibly obnoxious. I lost my appetite and just wanted to get out of there. Alex – I swear to god she is the next carry bradshaw – couldn’t have put this feeling of disgust into better words, “the Sicilian men undress you with your eyes and then proceed to make you feel as if you just optically contracted an STD.” YUK! Add to that, the food was horrible. I am sure that I consumed the toxic bacteria that took over my bowel for the rest of the trip on the ferry (no further comment … I did handle it very well though I must say, there was only one emergency incident when during a museum lecture I had to sprint to the bathroom). On the ferry, and I shared a small room with bunk beds and a bathroom that stunk like a porta potty, and it was about 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the room. The ferry arrived at 6:15 AM in the morning, so that was not so pleasant, and our day began about two hours after we reached our first stop, Cefalu (its name comes from the Greek word for head – Cefalos – for the land sticks out). Cefalu was cool – we visited its Normand/Byzantine Cathedral, which contains the largest figural mosaic of Christ (it is located on the altar piece of the church’s central apse) that dates to the mid-twelfth century.
Number 5: Theater Ecstasy
Standing in the pouring rain and waking up at 6:15 in the morning is not my idea of a good time, so the first day in Sicily was a challenge. By the time we reached the last site of the day in Taoromina (between Cefalu and Syracuse), it was taking every fiber of my being to hold it together to enjoy the tour. This was compounded by my lifeline to the rest of the world, and key to enduring long bus rides -- my iphone -- having died, and the prospect of a three-hour bus ride from Taoromina to the hotel in Syracuse looming ahead after the site visit. Despite all of these obstacles, I enjoyed my time at this location. My close friend on the program Emma presented her site report on the theater, and talked a lot about how the Romans changed and expanded the Greek originals (Emma gets her own space on this list later). Basically the Greeks would construct their theaters into nature, and the Romans would build upon them and reduce the orchestra (area between the audience and the actors for the chorus) and build up the background. Theaters were seen as a place cut off from the rest of the world where the unthinkable could occur, and the audience could undergo a sort of ecstasy by watching the performers. I believe this is more of a Roman conception, for the Greeks would create theaters within nature and use manipulative architecture so viewers could look out and be wowed by nature while also enjoying a show. We encountered theaters at nearly every single location we visited, each unique and flat out marvelous in its placement and manipulation of the surroundings. Taoromina was the largest. It is too bad it was raining and yucky weather because Taoromina is stunning. It overlooks the Mediterranean sea, from a town that is Amalfi-like in how it sits on a high cliff. The theaters at Syracuse, Morgantina and Selinunte were standard, nothing too exciting, but our final ancient site visit of the Sicily trip culminated with the theater at Segestum. This mountainside theater is amazing. The Cavea (seating arrangement) looks out upon two perfectly framed mountains behind the stage, and deep lush valleys. It is much smaller then the theater at Taoromina and more intimate, and the white limestone masonry is extremely symmetric. Professor Serfass organized a surprise for us – he had three centristi (my two favorites Blount and Andres) prepare and sing a number for us so we could hear what the acoustics were like. It was a lucky day for the 300 German seniors who happened to be the only others on the site this day.
Number 6: The Lord of the Flies.
Sicilian flies were all over my legs (even if I wore leggings they would find my ankles) every single moment of every single day. It sucked and I spazzed out really badly a few times.
Number 7: Temple F – The Franco Temple.
On Wednesday after a grueling afternoon at the Acropolis in Selinus and a miscommunication fiasco between Franco and Scott the head prof (we were on site until 6:30 PM), it was time for another Franco surprise. In Selinus none of the temples had official names – apparently there isn’t enough proof of who they were dedicated to, so they are just labeled A-G. Temple G was awesome, probably the second most colossal in Sicily. Today it looks like a giant earthquake occurred under the temple and all the columns came crashing down into one another. It was nice though, we had time to walk through the ruins and climb up on some of them (look at my pic below). We saw the largest temple in Sicily on the Acropolis in Agrigento (the Temple of Zeus) and some of its remains in the Archaeological Museum there. This one has a name because there is written evidence (thank you Polybius) that describes it as one of the wonders of the world. It was not simple and Doric, like pretty much every other temple in Sicily… it in fact had giant statues of men called telamoms who replaced the columns as the supports for the roofs. It’s a pretty sweet looking temple (I’m only going by my observation of the hypothetical reconstructions I saw at the museum), kind of like a case that holds a mummy. On Tuesday after Temple G we loaded onto the bus and Franco announced it was time for Temple F – the Franco temple. We loaded off the bus at a family run vinoteca and had a liquor/wine tasting. We tried a red along side a piece of crunchy bruscetta with sundried tomato paste (bought a container for you, mom) and spicy olives, a marsala, an almond liquor, and a desert wine with a biscotti to dip in. I officially like olives!
Franco managed to get sausages on our menu (he would pick out the food for every meal and it would come in mass to us) at least once a day, every single day. The first time they were decent, the fifth time was not so fun, especially because there weren’t any other options. Dessert after dinner was one of my favorite daily events… the sugar rush of dark chocolate gelato, the soft crunch of a sweet and flaky canolli, a tiramisu soaking in some sort of liquor, or a lemoncake with a tang.
Number 8: Tophets
The second to last day we went to an island called Motia (pronounced moe-sha) off the coast of Western Sicily. This is a third generation Carthaginian Colony from the one on the mainland beside it (we boated out there). It is cool because you can see elements of Carthaginian religious ritual that parallel those in North African Colonies. The Carthaginians would ritually sacrifice their oldest born male children to prove their loyalty to the gods in times of angst – basically they would give up the thing that meant the most of them. It was the highest honor to be the selected family – thus it was mostly boys from aristocratic families. We walked to the far west shore of Motia and were surrounded by small graves in a Tophet – or child burial ground. The creepy only gets creepier. Plutarch wrote about the ritual: he records that the procession would start out at the house of the victim with noisemakers, and would process to the shrine of Baal Hammon (Phoenician Zeus) where they would put the baby in a boiling cauldron. Interestingly, archaeologists found terracotta masks with smiling faces in the area – the parents would wear these so that they would have the appearance of being happy during the ritual. The ancients were just as vulnerable to emotion as us in the modern day.
The second to last day we went to an island called Motia (pronounced moe-sha) off the coast of Western Sicily. This is a third generation Carthaginian Colony from the one on the mainland beside it (we boated out there). It is cool because you can see elements of Carthaginian religious ritual that parallel those in North African Colonies. The Carthaginians would ritually sacrifice their oldest born male children to prove their loyalty to the gods in times of angst – basically they would give up the thing that meant the most of them. It was the highest honor to be the selected family – thus it was mostly boys from aristocratic families. We walked to the far west shore of Motia and were surrounded by small graves in a Tophet – or child burial ground. The creepy only gets creepier. Plutarch wrote about the ritual: he records that the procession would start out at the house of the victim with noisemakers, and would process to the shrine of Baal Hammon (Phoenician Zeus) where they would put the baby in a boiling cauldron. Interestingly, archaeologists found terracotta masks with smiling faces in the area – the parents would wear these so that they would have the appearance of being happy during the ritual. The ancients were just as vulnerable to emotion as us in the modern day.
Number 9: Cherry Tomatoes
On the morning of the last day we went to a small town located just outside Palermo called Monreale. I loved the town. It contained a huge Cathedral with a beautiful and intricately decorated knave (the entire genesis) and altarpiece with extensive gilding. We chilled in cafes in the central piazza, which was nice also. By the parking lot there was a huge market/fruitstand. I purchased a freshly squeezed frozen lemonade (the lady was making them onsite in a machine and fresh pitchers were sitting on a table) and a massive bag of cherry tomatoes (which she so kindly washed for me) that were only one euro and tasted like candy. It was a rather pleasant morning.
Number 10: Lesbian theater
Time for the dreaded ferry ride back. At least we were more prepared this time – well kind of. Alex and I made an epic fail at finding something good to carry on board for dinner to avoid the ferry cafeteria (neither of us wanted paninis, but were stupidly stubborn) and ended up with a box of ritz crackers, another of wafers, and peanut m&ms. Of course Ro found the place that makes personalized paninis and the entire centro followed suit and was chowing down on them in front of us. I guess the break from real food was kind of nice. Over dinner with the girls we were joined by another centristi named Emma who is one of my favorite people at the program because she is so chill and not weird in any sense/gets life (sorry guys I had to say it – the new thing at the centro is this game called ninja that involves standing in a circle and hitting people and freezing in awkward positions. It makes me cringe when a game gets fired up and we are in a public place because the Europeans think it’s the weirdest thing ever. I want to run and hide and pretend I am not in the program – ok that’s an exaggeration but it is pretty bad). Emma is openly lesbian, the first gay woman I have ever been close with. For the duration from dinner until I attempted to sleep that night Emma put on for Ro, Liz, Alex and me what she likes to call “Lesbian Theater” – basically her life story and responses to our questions about lesbians. For me this was great because I realized that up until that point I was incredibly naïve and influenced by prejudices and stereotypes. This discussion certainly cleared a lot of mysteries up. It also was awesome to sit down and listen to someone recount her life-story with so much animation and excitement.
Well there it is. I beat Sicily. It was not an easy battle and I am still recovering. I am posted up in a comfy hotel in London for the first half of my fall break (we get a week off). I hung out at the U of Birmingham with my sorority sister Ms. Erica G. last evening and enjoyed a taste of the life of an English University student/ what she’s up to this semester abroad. Alex is here as well as her best friend from home is studying in London. We hit the British Museum and the National Gallery, and I am planning on touring the Winston Church Hill World War II stuff tomorrow. Then Erica, Alex and Alex’s friend Sierra and I are heading to Amsterdam for the weekend.
I love you all –sorry about the delay of this entry, I just really needed a few days to relax and do some reflecting. I am halfway there.
Isabella
pictures and map of Sicily coming tomorrow problems with the website again!
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Mission Accomplished: Carcofi Guidia
Tuesday marked our first all day field trip in weeks that would take place strictly within the bounds of Rome itself. This doesn’t mean that it was any shorter or less strenuous, we spent the entire morning retracing the triumphal route of the conquering Roman generals (the path on which they would march after returning from battles abroad to display their spoils of war in an awesome spectacle and assert their power). I made it out of bed in response to my alarm, assembled my longchamp, grabbed some breakfast (my new favorite thing the centro has to offer is coffee yogurt… kind of odd, but great), took my cestini bag which per usual contained a container of provolone/prosciutto and Pina cake (Pina is Franco the director’s wife and this is his name for her yellow pound cake that I eat once a week), hopped on the bus, and got off at the Largo Argentina stop.
I would call this morning anything but exciting. We first listened to the professors talk about the giant ditch of ruins in the area called Largo Argentina (the name comes from a tower nearby that medieval popes erected). It reminded me of Boston back in its big dig days. Ok that was harsh. I was just trying to come up with a visual for you. I was paying attention, as this was our first stop on the old triumphal route and there were several fascinating manubial temples in the ditch, which the generals of the wealthy men of the fighting Catulus family dedicated during the 3rd/2nd century. Manubial temples are temples that generals built to honor a vow they made in battle when imploring to the gods to help them.
Anyways, an hour and a half later at the climactic ending of manubial temple marathon, and just as I was dozing off circa 10:50AM, I smelled something wonderful that fired neurons in my distant memory, and then a few minutes later I saw stars… and then I fainted like I did that time in tenth grade after the drunk driving assembly (this is an embarrassingly true story) and everyone freaked out.
GOTCHA!!
Just kidding, I was in the Jewish Ghetto, smelled a baking loaf of my cousin Debbie’s challah, and saw Jewish stars on the signs of all the restaurants around me. The Jewish ghetto is located where the ancient Circus Flaminius stood, which was a meeting ground for Plebian assemblies and a place for spectacles for large groups. Quintus Flamininus, (pronounced Flam-in-eye-nus) was another general of the Roman Republican conquering era who was known for finally subduing the annoying Macedonian King Philip and cleverly pulling all of the fickle Greek city-states into the Roman empire. In Ancient Greek class the day before, I had translated a section of Flamininus’ personal biography written by the Greek author Plutarch. This snippet illuminated his character; he is exemplary of the types of individuals running around in the hey day of the Roman Republic.
During the Greek Isthmian games, an annual event in which Greeks from all city states would participate as a statement of their unity and peace (sort of like the Olympics), Flamininus ostentatiously decided to announce their freedom and ability to exist peacefully and without taxation or garrison, of course thanks to the Romans and mainly Flamininus himself. Plutarch describes how Flamininus became the champion of the games. The Greeks didn’t even care about the other athletic competitions signifying peace and independence, they just wanted to greet and hail their savior. Flamininus is only one example of the power hungry characters I encountered this week who left his mark on the city by spoils of war.
So after exploring the fruits of the Roman expansion in the third and second century BC, it was time for the real challenge: finding fried artichokes (Carcofi guidia), the legendary dish of the Jewish Ghetto in Rome, despite no restaurants yet being opened. Most classmates settled for the ricotta chocolate torte cake found in the bakery on the corner (a bakery to which I will certainly return to buy challah as soon as I am back from my travels of the next two weeks), but determined girls like Alex and I knew what we wanted and set out ambitiously in search of the legendary artichokes. Along the way we were side tracked at a tourist shop because Alex absolutely needed to buy a gold SPQR bracelet. At first I protested the detour and said that we couldn’t afford digressions (she won), BUT while she was paying, the cashier overheard us talking about our mission. It was fate and five minutes later we were sitting in his buddy’s restaurant called La Bella Nonna (one of the most renowned, and yes mom its Zagat rated, restaurants in the ghetto). We were invited to sit down and treated to a to-go package of two, right out of the oil, perfectly sized fried artichokes. My artichoke melted the second it hit my mouth, a perfect combination of sweet and salty as Alex so perfectly claimed. I have never tasted anything so delightful in my entire life, and never again will I roll my eyes at the Zinman dinner table when Howard and Margie rave about the time they went to the Jewish ghetto in Rome and had fried artichokes without me. Mission accomplished! We are planning on taking our centristi friends back to La Bella Nonna for a Saturday night dinner in November, as we befriended the owner, host, and angelic cashier who showed us the path to salvation.
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| Fried Artichokes!!! |
Sunday, October 3, 2010
Polybius, Praeneste and Pleasure Barges
As part of my application to ICCS, I wrote a personal statement about my classics career thus far and future aspirations. I began this statement with the following paragraph:
“When I tell people that I am a Classics major, they usually respond in one of three ways. Some immediately recount for me their recent trip to Italy or Greece and the sites they visited. Others test my knowledge of ancient history by making references to facts they are familiar with. In most cases however, people question what I am intending to do for the rest of my life with a degree in Classics, and why have I chosen to invest in this study.”
For the rest of the essay, I attempted with my most persuasive rhetoric and concise examples to answer the question. Obviously the ICCS application committee liked my answer, but I still feel rather put off when asked to explain myself this way. Why do I bring this up? Well, in history class bright and early last Monday morning, Professor Serfass began his lecture by posing the exact same question “Why pursue the study of Classics?”
When he said these words I thought to myself oh god, the haunting question that makes my blood boil every time I am asked it. I think Serfass was just trying to be funny to get us into the lecture topic for the day (the Roman subjugation of the eastern Mediterranean world… namely Africa, Greece and Asia), when he said that we should respond to anyone who asks us this by quoting a rhetorical question of Polybius (one of the Greek authors we have been reading). He proceeded in a highly energetic tone:
“Can anyone be so indifferent or idle as to not care to know by what means and under what kind of polity almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome!!!!??? And that too within a period of fifty-three years!!!!???”
Ok, so I added the explanation points, question marks, and broke the sentence into two instead of one rhetorical question to make clear how Serfass said it, but it was at this minute I had an epiphany: I AM A HUGE NERD! That is why I study classics, simply because I think the Romans are freaking awesome like Polybius does, and who the heck wouldn’t want to know about how much ass they kicked and how they did it. I have to wonder what the ICCS application committee would have thought if I sent the sentence I just wrote in as my personal statement.
It has been a brutal week. I am mentally and physically exhausted and have a runny nose like usual. Here’s a brief synopsis of what the week entailed:
-7:30 a.m. or earlier wakeups EVERY single day
-a 12 hour field trip on Tuesday
-5 hours at the Italian Quaestura on Wednesday morning to sort out my permesso ad soggiouro (permission to live in Rome) and have my fingerprints taken (with everyone else from the Centro), brief side story:
The taking of the finger prints itself, never mind happening finally after four hours of waiting, was rather unpleasant. After my name was called, I was escorted to a small office where there were three Italian military men and a massive scanning machine. I learned that I don’t have strong contours on my fingertips, because the scanning machine would not pick anything up when I placed my hand palm down on it. This problem really ticked them off, and the soldier in charge of manning the scanner decided to resolve my apparent biological deficiency by shoving each of my fingers and my palm upon the scanning machine and trying again and again. He managed to break three of my gorgeously manicured nails. Awesome.
-a 5 hour field trip that included a brutal inscription project and subsequent afternoon research, an art history lecture, and a lovely envelope-sealed Greek take home test that I studied for every minute of my spare time in the week leading up to this point and eventually ripped open and conquered circa 7:30PM on Thursday
-a 4 hour Art History lecture in Castel San Angelo and the Capidolium Square/Museum.
Monday’s lecture was standard (besides my epiphany), and on Tuesday we loaded onto the bus bright and early for a long day of traveling and site visits. In the morning we visited Gabii (which was not interesting at all…) and then journeyed to Praeneste, another Roman colony in the Apennine foothills. I looked forward to the Praeneste trip, for the museum on the city’s famous citadel houses my favorite piece of ancient art in the entire world: the Nile Mosaic. The hilltop Praeneste Museum is located within the remains of an amazing piece of architecture: a colossal sanctuary to the Roman Goddess Fortuna. It consists of six levels constructed on the slope of an Apennine foothill, the top most of which forms a plateau upon the mountain’s peak with a flat space and a theatre. The bus dropped us off at the bottom of sanctuary’s staircase, and we began our long ascent, – as if we were ancient pilgrims coming to worship the goddess –to the modern day museum located at the top. The shrine is across from two adjacent mountains, and I can imagine the pilgrims, after climbing flight upon flight of stairs, turning around and looking at the menacing dark blue outlines of the mountains in the distant hazy atmosphere, feeling just as awestruck as I. I can appreciate how being so high would have made their journey to Praeneste and ascent to the top worthwhile, as they were climbing to the heavenly realm. Our Professor Chris explained that the Romans purposely set it up this way, so as to have the sanctuary angled towards the two adjacent, symmetric mountains. He calls it “manipulative architecture.”
The Nile Mosaic, located in the topmost story of the museum, fulfilled my expectations. The top half of the massive mosaic (the mosaic has the diameter of a small out of ground pool) contains a scene of a hunt with mythical animals that have labels in Greek, and the lower half, a scene of the Nile flooding over a mixture of Greek and Egyptian buildings and icons (soldiers, statues of gods, etc). In my studies on the portrayal of animals in ancient iconography in my graduate level Classical Art History seminar last semester at Cornell, we spent a long time discussing the animals and the meaning behind this rare synthesis. Before being restored and displayed in a grand room in the museum with all white walls and brilliant lighting, this mosaic was the wall of a grotto in a niche of a small building beside the base of the sanctuary. Water poured over the rocks and on top of the mosaic tiles, and a statue of the Nile river goddess stood in front of it. I can picture mellow torches lighting the grotto and revealing the spectacular scene to on lookers.
After finishing up at Praeneste, we gobbled down lunch and headed to a sight I had never heard of before called Nemi. We first visited remains that are thought to be a temple… this also was rather anti climatic… and then jumped back on the bus and drove around a lake (which we later learned was in a volcanic crater). I had no idea what to expect when we arrived at what looked like a massive airplane hangar in the middle of the woods. My visit began with a traumatizing experience in the bathroom (I ripped the door handle off the inside of the bathroom stall and was stuck alone for 10 minutes before figuring out how to put it back together – you can imagine what the entirety of ICCS Fall 10’ was thinking (and said) when I finally emerged from the bathroom after taking way too long).
Why had we come to this strange, massive, nearly empty place? Apparently in the 1920s, during dictatorship of the fascist Mussolini, two ships that dated to the reign of the emperor Caligula were found in the lake we had just driven around. . These were not warships, much to the contrary, they were colossal pontoons upon which the Romans partied (the remains found in the lake make this clear) during the imperial period, i.e. pleasure barges. I can’t wait until we get to study that era of the imperial period in more detail!!
Mussolini took an interest in these ships, which had been perfectly preserved in an anaerobic environment at the bottom of the lake, and that turned out to be very unfortunate. He drained the lake to remove the ships, and then realized he had to create an air-tight museum to keep their wood from rotting. Sadly, just before the end of World War II, a German troop burnt them down (or so the story goes). The museum we visited thus contained only remnants of the ships, a picture display taken during the draining and moving of the ships out of the lake, and some luxury items they found in the lake (most were looted).
Fast forward two days as Wednesday consisted of the Quaestura and hours of studying for my first Greek test. At the end of Thursday’s field trip, in which we hit up the Terme Museum in the city proper, our assignment was to work with a new partner to find an inscription within the institution’s garden of stones, translate it, find out what it is, date it, etc. Stellar star award of the week goes out to my partner, Gavin. Gavin and I came upon a rather ugly block of travertine and decided it was the one. We spent about an hour translating it accurately and arranging a report in accordance with the provided example.
After lunch, further research helped us determine that our monument must have been a milestone that emperor Augustus installed to mark out the neighborhoods of the empire. I was rather frustrated because the date I was getting from the monument was not aligning with the date our research showed Augustus divided the quattordecim vici (fourteen neighborhoods). Basically you date the reign of an emperor by how many years he held tribunal power (which is every year of his reign)– and it was stated that this piece of stone was set in the seventeenth year of Augustus’ tribunal power… so it would mean that it was in 10 BC because Augustus started his rule in 27 BC. BUT – and this is why he gets the stellar star award this week – Gavin figured out that Augustus, being the first emperor, did actually not start his true tribunician power until 3 years into his reign in 24 BC, and therefore the 17th year of his tribunician power would have been in fact in 7BC, the year in which I found out in my research he divided the neighborhoods. All I’m saying is that we better get a check plus on this assignment!
Friday’s Art History marathon consisted of two hours in Castel San Angelo and two hours in the Capidolium. After a week of studying ancient civilization, a trip to the sixteenth century was well received. We have finally reached the point in the Italian History of Art at which my prior studies end – the High Renaissance, and doesn’t pick up again until after the Baroque period with the neoclassical artists of the eighteenth century. We have begun to study the mannerists, i.e. the generation of painters that succeeded Raphael. Although Raphael will always have the largest place in my heart, I have certainly enjoyed learning about and viewing the mannerist works. The ugliness of the outside Castel San Angelo – the cold circular fortress that lies close to St. Peters on the edge of Vatican city and was once the emperor Hadrians mauseleum – does not at all signal what is to be found inside its uppermost floor. An absolutely stunning papal throne room facing towards the river with a tripartite window for the Pope to look out is within the walls. But why is it here, in this ugly monument? We learned that the Pope Clement VII embarrassingly fled from his Vatican palace into Castel San Angelo, the city’s fortress, due to the German sacking of Rome, and he lived there in gloom for an extended period of time. His successor, Paul III, god forbid this should ever happen again, decided to deck the place out and make it suitable to inhabit. The papal throne room in the fortress contains a breath taking fresco cycle of the accomplishments of Alexander the Great. The fresco cycle is particularly amazing. The artist creates an illusion by painting royal columns into the wall with gold capitals, making them seem as though they are an architectural sculpture of the room. He uses deep pastels and illustrates the bodies of his figures in advanced poses of Michelangelo-esque controposto. I found most interesting how the artist rendered in paint 6 bronze tondi (marked off circular areas) evenly spaced around the room upon which he showed snippets of the intellectual accomplishments of Alexander the Great. I couldn’t believe how the artist made the tondi look like real bronze reliefs even though they were actually paintings. He made every figure stand out so much through differences between light and shadow, although only using variations of a single tone! Other mannerist pieces we studied, particularly one in which the artist renders a Madonna and Child in a purely icy blue tone, made me think of my favorite Picasso blue period pieces.
In the Capidolium Museum at the end of lecture, we again encountered paintings of my new love Caravaggio. Two figures, a young beautiful gypsy girl, and a boy of royalty and extremely fashionable garb, interact as she reads his palm. They gaze at each other, the boy clearly being mesmerized by her beauty and possibly having one of his first experiences out in the real world on his won and away from his courtly childhood. Looking below one can see she is sneakily pulling a golden ring from his finger. Caravaggio depicted such a focused and interesting interaction. I cannot wait to see more of his works.
I have been in Rome now four weeks, and I am finally starting to love it here and even know my way around. I have my coffee shop that I go to every other afternoon to order a cafe Americano and chat with the friendly barista, am up to speed with all my classes, am starting to recognize items on the weekly centro dinner menu (although the surprises can be fun) and am at the same time having a lot of fun. It feels good to be settled.
Next Friday, we leave for a week of studying in Sicily. The week before we leave will be devoted primarily to preparatory work for our adventure, and hopefully things will be much more relaxed than last week. After Sicily it is finally fall break! Alex and I are travelling to London for the week, and then going to Amsterdam before we return to Rome.
**** i am having some issues with this website so i can't add pictures right now but i will put them up asap!!
“When I tell people that I am a Classics major, they usually respond in one of three ways. Some immediately recount for me their recent trip to Italy or Greece and the sites they visited. Others test my knowledge of ancient history by making references to facts they are familiar with. In most cases however, people question what I am intending to do for the rest of my life with a degree in Classics, and why have I chosen to invest in this study.”
For the rest of the essay, I attempted with my most persuasive rhetoric and concise examples to answer the question. Obviously the ICCS application committee liked my answer, but I still feel rather put off when asked to explain myself this way. Why do I bring this up? Well, in history class bright and early last Monday morning, Professor Serfass began his lecture by posing the exact same question “Why pursue the study of Classics?”
When he said these words I thought to myself oh god, the haunting question that makes my blood boil every time I am asked it. I think Serfass was just trying to be funny to get us into the lecture topic for the day (the Roman subjugation of the eastern Mediterranean world… namely Africa, Greece and Asia), when he said that we should respond to anyone who asks us this by quoting a rhetorical question of Polybius (one of the Greek authors we have been reading). He proceeded in a highly energetic tone:
“Can anyone be so indifferent or idle as to not care to know by what means and under what kind of polity almost the whole inhabited world was conquered and brought under the dominion of the single city of Rome!!!!??? And that too within a period of fifty-three years!!!!???”
Ok, so I added the explanation points, question marks, and broke the sentence into two instead of one rhetorical question to make clear how Serfass said it, but it was at this minute I had an epiphany: I AM A HUGE NERD! That is why I study classics, simply because I think the Romans are freaking awesome like Polybius does, and who the heck wouldn’t want to know about how much ass they kicked and how they did it. I have to wonder what the ICCS application committee would have thought if I sent the sentence I just wrote in as my personal statement.
It has been a brutal week. I am mentally and physically exhausted and have a runny nose like usual. Here’s a brief synopsis of what the week entailed:
-7:30 a.m. or earlier wakeups EVERY single day
-a 12 hour field trip on Tuesday
-5 hours at the Italian Quaestura on Wednesday morning to sort out my permesso ad soggiouro (permission to live in Rome) and have my fingerprints taken (with everyone else from the Centro), brief side story:
The taking of the finger prints itself, never mind happening finally after four hours of waiting, was rather unpleasant. After my name was called, I was escorted to a small office where there were three Italian military men and a massive scanning machine. I learned that I don’t have strong contours on my fingertips, because the scanning machine would not pick anything up when I placed my hand palm down on it. This problem really ticked them off, and the soldier in charge of manning the scanner decided to resolve my apparent biological deficiency by shoving each of my fingers and my palm upon the scanning machine and trying again and again. He managed to break three of my gorgeously manicured nails. Awesome.
-a 5 hour field trip that included a brutal inscription project and subsequent afternoon research, an art history lecture, and a lovely envelope-sealed Greek take home test that I studied for every minute of my spare time in the week leading up to this point and eventually ripped open and conquered circa 7:30PM on Thursday
-a 4 hour Art History lecture in Castel San Angelo and the Capidolium Square/Museum.
Monday’s lecture was standard (besides my epiphany), and on Tuesday we loaded onto the bus bright and early for a long day of traveling and site visits. In the morning we visited Gabii (which was not interesting at all…) and then journeyed to Praeneste, another Roman colony in the Apennine foothills. I looked forward to the Praeneste trip, for the museum on the city’s famous citadel houses my favorite piece of ancient art in the entire world: the Nile Mosaic. The hilltop Praeneste Museum is located within the remains of an amazing piece of architecture: a colossal sanctuary to the Roman Goddess Fortuna. It consists of six levels constructed on the slope of an Apennine foothill, the top most of which forms a plateau upon the mountain’s peak with a flat space and a theatre. The bus dropped us off at the bottom of sanctuary’s staircase, and we began our long ascent, – as if we were ancient pilgrims coming to worship the goddess –to the modern day museum located at the top. The shrine is across from two adjacent mountains, and I can imagine the pilgrims, after climbing flight upon flight of stairs, turning around and looking at the menacing dark blue outlines of the mountains in the distant hazy atmosphere, feeling just as awestruck as I. I can appreciate how being so high would have made their journey to Praeneste and ascent to the top worthwhile, as they were climbing to the heavenly realm. Our Professor Chris explained that the Romans purposely set it up this way, so as to have the sanctuary angled towards the two adjacent, symmetric mountains. He calls it “manipulative architecture.”
 |
| View out from the top of the sanctuary |
 |
| Sitting on the steps of the theater |
 |
| A reconstruction of the ancient sanctuary |
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| Modern day view of the santuary |
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| The Nile Mosaic |
Why had we come to this strange, massive, nearly empty place? Apparently in the 1920s, during dictatorship of the fascist Mussolini, two ships that dated to the reign of the emperor Caligula were found in the lake we had just driven around. . These were not warships, much to the contrary, they were colossal pontoons upon which the Romans partied (the remains found in the lake make this clear) during the imperial period, i.e. pleasure barges. I can’t wait until we get to study that era of the imperial period in more detail!!
Mussolini took an interest in these ships, which had been perfectly preserved in an anaerobic environment at the bottom of the lake, and that turned out to be very unfortunate. He drained the lake to remove the ships, and then realized he had to create an air-tight museum to keep their wood from rotting. Sadly, just before the end of World War II, a German troop burnt them down (or so the story goes). The museum we visited thus contained only remnants of the ships, a picture display taken during the draining and moving of the ships out of the lake, and some luxury items they found in the lake (most were looted).
Fast forward two days as Wednesday consisted of the Quaestura and hours of studying for my first Greek test. At the end of Thursday’s field trip, in which we hit up the Terme Museum in the city proper, our assignment was to work with a new partner to find an inscription within the institution’s garden of stones, translate it, find out what it is, date it, etc. Stellar star award of the week goes out to my partner, Gavin. Gavin and I came upon a rather ugly block of travertine and decided it was the one. We spent about an hour translating it accurately and arranging a report in accordance with the provided example.
After lunch, further research helped us determine that our monument must have been a milestone that emperor Augustus installed to mark out the neighborhoods of the empire. I was rather frustrated because the date I was getting from the monument was not aligning with the date our research showed Augustus divided the quattordecim vici (fourteen neighborhoods). Basically you date the reign of an emperor by how many years he held tribunal power (which is every year of his reign)– and it was stated that this piece of stone was set in the seventeenth year of Augustus’ tribunal power… so it would mean that it was in 10 BC because Augustus started his rule in 27 BC. BUT – and this is why he gets the stellar star award this week – Gavin figured out that Augustus, being the first emperor, did actually not start his true tribunician power until 3 years into his reign in 24 BC, and therefore the 17th year of his tribunician power would have been in fact in 7BC, the year in which I found out in my research he divided the neighborhoods. All I’m saying is that we better get a check plus on this assignment!
Friday’s Art History marathon consisted of two hours in Castel San Angelo and two hours in the Capidolium. After a week of studying ancient civilization, a trip to the sixteenth century was well received. We have finally reached the point in the Italian History of Art at which my prior studies end – the High Renaissance, and doesn’t pick up again until after the Baroque period with the neoclassical artists of the eighteenth century. We have begun to study the mannerists, i.e. the generation of painters that succeeded Raphael. Although Raphael will always have the largest place in my heart, I have certainly enjoyed learning about and viewing the mannerist works. The ugliness of the outside Castel San Angelo – the cold circular fortress that lies close to St. Peters on the edge of Vatican city and was once the emperor Hadrians mauseleum – does not at all signal what is to be found inside its uppermost floor. An absolutely stunning papal throne room facing towards the river with a tripartite window for the Pope to look out is within the walls. But why is it here, in this ugly monument? We learned that the Pope Clement VII embarrassingly fled from his Vatican palace into Castel San Angelo, the city’s fortress, due to the German sacking of Rome, and he lived there in gloom for an extended period of time. His successor, Paul III, god forbid this should ever happen again, decided to deck the place out and make it suitable to inhabit. The papal throne room in the fortress contains a breath taking fresco cycle of the accomplishments of Alexander the Great. The fresco cycle is particularly amazing. The artist creates an illusion by painting royal columns into the wall with gold capitals, making them seem as though they are an architectural sculpture of the room. He uses deep pastels and illustrates the bodies of his figures in advanced poses of Michelangelo-esque controposto. I found most interesting how the artist rendered in paint 6 bronze tondi (marked off circular areas) evenly spaced around the room upon which he showed snippets of the intellectual accomplishments of Alexander the Great. I couldn’t believe how the artist made the tondi look like real bronze reliefs even though they were actually paintings. He made every figure stand out so much through differences between light and shadow, although only using variations of a single tone! Other mannerist pieces we studied, particularly one in which the artist renders a Madonna and Child in a purely icy blue tone, made me think of my favorite Picasso blue period pieces.
In the Capidolium Museum at the end of lecture, we again encountered paintings of my new love Caravaggio. Two figures, a young beautiful gypsy girl, and a boy of royalty and extremely fashionable garb, interact as she reads his palm. They gaze at each other, the boy clearly being mesmerized by her beauty and possibly having one of his first experiences out in the real world on his won and away from his courtly childhood. Looking below one can see she is sneakily pulling a golden ring from his finger. Caravaggio depicted such a focused and interesting interaction. I cannot wait to see more of his works.
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| Caravaggio's mesmerizing "The Gypsy" |
Next Friday, we leave for a week of studying in Sicily. The week before we leave will be devoted primarily to preparatory work for our adventure, and hopefully things will be much more relaxed than last week. After Sicily it is finally fall break! Alex and I are travelling to London for the week, and then going to Amsterdam before we return to Rome.
**** i am having some issues with this website so i can't add pictures right now but i will put them up asap!!
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