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.