Soo. Much. Latin.

We're finishing up our excursions outside of Rome, sadly enough (I love long bus rides for some reason. Don't know why, just do). Last Tuesday we journeyed to Gabii, Praenestre, and Lake Nemi.

Gabii was an important city while Rome was developing in the Republican period, though, oddly enough, it lost it's importance as Rome grew. There are some impressive ruins there, including a temple, some rectangular rooms (shops?), and some other buildings that we didn't learn about. Cool. My favorite part was the "shops" surrounding the temple because they had been carved out of the Gabinus tufa outcrop. The back wall was beautiful- one continuous rock. Anyway. The temple was also situated on a hill overlooking a valley, so one can imagine how impressive the temple would have been. There was also a theater right in front of the temple, though sadly, the slope is the only remaining part of it.

Temple to Juno

The Theater?

Shops? Tufa!

Current Excavations

There's a summer excavation there with a field school, though they're working further down the road in another temple area. Should be interesting to see what they can uncover. Gabii is a beautiful place, and it's story isn't typical of cities...usually cities get bigger as time goes by, especially if they're connected to a growing empire.

The next stop was Praenestre. It has a modern name, but sadly, I don't know it and I don't feel like looking it up. Basically it had a tough go during ancient times because it had this bad habit of picking the wrong side in wars. It was the "leader" of the cities that fought against Rome in the early republic, and then chose to get on Sulla's bad side around the 2nd century BCE (which resulted in enslavement and death for many of its citizens). Finally, it had to be quelled when Marc Antony's crazy first wife, Fulvia, and this other guy decided to start a war from Perugia with Rome. She ended up fleeing to Praenestre, pretty much screwing it over again.

Interestingly, it was also heavily bombed during world war II. You think they would have figured out how to pick the right side, right? Luckily, because Roman concrete is so badass, most of the ancient stuff survived (can't say the same for the medieval stuff). Here are some pictures. The place we visited is a museum on top of a hill...

The courtyard (formerly a theater)

Russian nesting dolls? Actually weights for merchants

AHH!

The Nile Mosaic

The nile Mosaic is beautiful, though it's kind of an enigma because it was found in the 18th century and haphazardly reassembled, so some parts of it are probably in the wrong place. Believe it or not, this can skew the way we can interpret it and what its purpose was. There are all kinds of animals, ships, and even hunting scenes throughout.

The museum used to be a temple. This was built into the hill in a fine example of manipulative architecture. Basically, the architect controls what the visitor sees and when they see it. You start at the bottom, and because the hill is so steep, you can't see what's at the top. After climbing one level, you get a nice rest, then a glimpse of the ultimate goal. Ultimately, there was a round temple at the top, hidden by a square temple. Kind of neat.

The next stop was to Lake Nemi, which I think is my favorite place that we've visited. The city is so beautiful...I could definitely see myself living there! We went to visit the Ship Museum (or something like that) as well as some temple ruins a little past the lake. The lake is in a volcanic crater, so there are steep hills that form around it, creating a pool. The ship museum used to house the remains of two ENORMOUS ships built by emperor Caracalla, mainly for entertainment. They survived all the way until world war II, until the Germans set fire to the museum, completely destroying the ships :( Here are the shots from around the museum...

Funerary altar relief

I didn't realize how creepy this was till now (head of Aphrodite)

Lovely Athena statue

Model of the original ship (1/10 the size)
All that survives of the original ships...

The next part involved a short "hike" to the Temple of Diana, which was only recently discovered (and I mean recent as in last fall). There were already some ruins there though, so that's what these pictures are. Notice the amazing viewww

Painted Wall

Now, you may be wondering why the title of this obscenely long post is about latin. Well, the Thursday after this trip, we went to the National Museum to do inscription assignments. Fun! Except we were doing latin inscriptions. Guess who hasn't taken a latin class? Yep. That was interesting. Basically I was put with two really good latin students and helped do the other stuff (material of the inscription, size of the stone, etc). It was a WHOLE week of latin inscriptions. Can't a girl get a little Greek here? Geesh. Still really good practice though...I feel like I could apply the same principles in Greek as we learned in latin inscription.

So that was last week. Now I find myself at the end of another week, behind once again. Oh well. I do what I can. Midterms are coming up...eeek!

Alba Fucens AHHH

I'm already a few weeks behind (ah!) but time flies so quickly and there's so much to do and explore...

Anyway, I'm going to condense some of the long field trips because as interesting as they were for me, I'm sure ruins and talk of shops can only be interesting for so long to others...haha. I'm not going to pretend like anyone reads this for my witty, insightful comments. I know the pictures are what's up.

Okay, so ALBA FUCENS. This was about two weeks ago (so the week before the Roma game). It's about 2 hours away (not sure which direction) and is in a beautiful place, right up next to some mountains and a valley that used to be a lake, but was drained around the time of Claudius. We were studying the development of cities...Rome is a crazy city layout-wise, which is why it's so easy to get lost here. Colonies were more organized, though, of course, they were also a lot smaller. I'll stop gabbing though, here are the pictures.

FABIO CANNAVARO heehe

Couldn't help myself

Rohan?

Game Arena

It was so refreshing to get out of the city for a change! There was a medieval church on the site as well; it had been built over a temple to (maybe) Apollo. The same columns and stone walls were in use as well. There were some carvings into the stone as well. I love stuff like that...I love to imagine who the person was who carved it, when, and what they were thinking when they did. Here are some pics of the church (and subsequent carvings. Look closely at them, they're not very apparent. It's a ship/barge and some words).

Finally, here are some pictures of the site itself...Our assignment for the day was to examine different buildings and then determine what they were back in the day. FANTASTIC (really). We correctly identified a basilica (no, not like a church, basilicas were originally multi-purpose buildings where meetings would happen), the shops (called tibernae), and the bathhouse.

Public Bathroom
Hypocaust System! (for the heated room in the bathhouse)

You've no idea how long it took us to figure out what this building was...

turns out it's a Macellum (I know, who ever heard of that?)

It was a grand day of adventuring- some people even held their own mock gladiatorial fights, and there was even a footrace. I don't think you understand how great it is to nerd out as hardcore as we do at some of these sites.

Thursday took us into the heart of ancient Rome, once again, (get used to that phrase, because from now on I'll be saying that A LOT). We saw the round temple and some temple ruins that no one really knows what they were. I'm finding that uncertainty is a theme in this course...score! Anyway, here are some pictures of that...

Round Temple (duh)

they're everywhere!

Yeah...not really sure who these temples were dedicated to

Next to the Tiber River!

The Forum (not part of the day, but LOOK at that view)

We were in a place that was called the Forum Boarium, which was a marketplace in ancient Rome, and a fairly important part of the city. My notes on it pretty much say "area for commerce, destroyed by fire, rebuilt, destroyed by flood, rebuilt, destroyed by fire and flood." No, I'm not kidding. That's pure fact. Anyway, today the Forum Boarium is just a busy street, a far cry from the bustling, smelly place it would have been back in the day.

So I'm behind about two weeks. Hard enough to think that I've been here for over a month! I'll get around to the next week...later.

Ahhlalara ROMA lalaraahh ROMA

Soo that's my attempt at one of the cheers I heard at the AS Roma/Napoli soccer game last Saturday. SO. MUCH. FUN. A group of us wanted to experience the atmosphere of a true futbol match, so last Wednesday, we walked down to a lottery ticket shop, where we bought our tickets. It's interesting how they deal with tickets here. We had to bring passports to get them, our name is printed on the ticket, and then we have to show our passport with the ticket to get into the stadium.

Before we went though, we had a nice barbecue in the garden. It was pretty good, though I missed having some french fries to go with the burgers and hot dogs. Our lovely program director, Franco, helped us out (and by helped I mean he grilled everything) and even arranged a bus to get us there, since, as a Napoli fan, he wanted to go. His daughter, Elisabeta (what a pretty name, eh?) also came, though she was decked out in Roma gear and helped us paint our faces. After a ride to Stadio Olimpico, we were there!

There were street vendors selling knock off scarves and jerseys, so I got a Totti jersey and scarf for 15 euro total, not bad. I think it was because I tried to speak Italian (which was me speaking Spanish).

Anyway, once we got into the stadium, seating was kind of just pick where you want to go, since we got cheap tickets. We were on a curve but the view wasn't bad at all. They didn't play the national anthem, but they DID play the Roma club song, so we got to hold up our scarves and pretend to sing along in Italian. Some shots of the stadium and the crazies...

Unfortunately, Roma lost the game (their first home loss of the season) 2-0, one goal on a PK. The funniest part, though this won't surprise anyone who knows soccer, is that of the 17 or so fouls called, only 3 were legitimate fouls. Ohh Italian soccer :) The PK was definitely questionable...but what can you do? The cheers were also fantastic, though of course, being in Italian, Elisabeta had to explain what they were about. My favorite involved something along the lines of "we will destroy Napoli like Mt Vesuvius did". Niceee. I'd say we won for best cheer.

Alas, after the game, getting back proved to be difficult. Our Franco bus was only one way, and there isn't a direct route to where we live from the stadium. So we took a bus to the Vatican in order to catch a bus home. Too bad said bus is the 870, which NEVER comes. We learned this last week on our art history field trip to the Vatican Museum. Oh well. We walked back. UGH. Usually not bad, but it was after midnight and the walk from the Vatican to Trastevere involves some badass hills. All in all, a solid adventure.

p.s. one of my professors asked me to write bigger on my next quiz. HA!

Standing.

Last Friday, the art history class went to the Vatican Museum...that was a LONG day (the professor is one of the most long winded professors I've ever had. He's worse than Karl Wirth). Damn. Here are some pictures that I took. The first few are pre Renaissance, so they weren't what we were looking at, but they were interesting all the same, and since I was in the Vatican Museum, it's not like I wasn't going to take pictures.

The guy in the purple is the art history professor. Interesting.

We were mainly there to look at some of Raphael's art, which was pretty spectacular. We saw the Sistine Chapel (duh), but unfortunately, you're not allowed to take pictures in there. I can't describe being there in person though...it's quite incredible. It's funny when you walk in because EVERYONE is standing with their necks thrown back to look at the ceiling...

The Transfiguration I can't remember what these other two are called...

Can you tell which one was done first, second, and last? I guess what's interesting is that you can see how Raphael's style gradually gets more sophisticated. Transfiguration came last, the one in the middle second, and the one on the right was the first one.

Here are some other miscellaneous shots from around the museum

Some more of Raphael... Constantine's Battle of the Milvean Bridge

Random Acorn and a spinning globe in the courtyard

St Peter's Basilica

A Ceiling....kinda hard to tell, but it's called the 'Liberal Arts' Ceiling

Another ceiling....yes, both these pictures represent the entire thing

Well, there's that. The Ancient City class went to Alba Fucens yesterday, so I got to see some mountains! but I'll update later