Our first site visit on Wednesday was to a church called San Clemente. It is a 12th century Roman basilica. This church is much more interesting archaeologically because around the 1800s, a priest noticed a small cavity in a corner of the basilica and started excavating. Underneath the 12th century church, he discovered a 4th century church....and underneath that, he found ancient Roman buildings including a Mithraeum. A Mithraeum was a place where ancient Romans worshipped the god Mithras, who was a Persian god adopted into the Roman tradition. The legend of Mithras says that in the beginning, there were only two beings, Mithras and a bull. Apollo commanded Mithras to slay the bull, which Mithras did reluctantly. From the blood of the bull spilled life as we know it. Historians have come to understand that the religion is linked to astrology and that the bull is linked with the zodiac sign of Taurus. It was extremely cool to walk down into different layers of time! Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures there. :(
The other church we visited of note was Santa Maria Maggiore, a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The chuch is baroque in style and very beautifully and intricately adorned. It is important for pilgrims because it contains part of the manger from the birth of Jesus..
the reliquary
...and is also the burial place of Bernini!!!
Bernini was a 17th century baroque architect and sculptor and is responsible for numerous amazing sculptures and fountains across Rome, and also for the piazza and colonnades in front of St. Peter's basilica in Vatican City.
On Thursday, the whole group met at the Rome Termini train station for our first class trip to Florence! We spent most of the day Thursday touring around and doing things as a class, had a group dinner that night, and it was arranged for us to have a place to stay the night. The first place we went was the famous Uffizi Gallery, located just next to the Palazzo Vecchio, the town hall of Florence.
The Uffizi was a dream come true. Unfortunately (again) we weren't allowed to take any sort of pictures in the museum, but here are some clips of the things I was most excited to FINALLY see:
Botticelli's Birth of Venus
Titian's Venus of Urbino
Botticelli's Primavera
da Vinci's Annunciation
Caravaggio's Bacchus
Caravaggio's Sacrifice of Isaac
Gentileschi's Judith Slaying Holofernes
These are all (very famous) paintings that I've studied in many art history classes, so it was a delight to finally get to see them in person!
After the Uffizi, we took a short lunch break and met up at the Accademia. The Accademia is an art school in Florence with a small gallery showcasing Michaelangelo. No pictures there either! The gallery contains a bunch of Michaelangelo's unfinished statues and also the famous David. I loved the unfinished statues because they were still so rough and encased in huge blocks of marble, with the forms only beginning to emerge. It was great to see them in stark contrast to the smooth and detailed David which completely transcends its medium! Although I have seen countless images of the David and all of my art history professors have told me that it's huge, nothing prepared me for the sight of it. It is 17 feet tall and absolutely amazing. I secretly snapped a picture on my cell phone. :) After the Accademia, Profe took us to another interesting church, Santa Croce. There are lots of interesting people buried there!
tomb of Dante
tomb of Michaelangelo!
tomb of Galileo!
That night the whole group met up and we had dinner around the corner from our hotel at a restaurant called Za Za, one of Profe's favorites. We got to pick both a primo and a secando...I had fettucini bolognese and eggplant parmesean. Delicious! The next day was ours to explore, so a group of us decided to climb Brunelleschi's dome, finished in 1436. I was super excited about this because I've studied this iconic dome in many classes also. The dome tops the Florence cathedral, the Santa Maria del Fiore. The entire church was built, including the drum for the dome, without the builders knowing how such a large dome would be constructed. Because the ancient Roman formula for concrete (used to build the dome of the Pantheon) had been lost in the middle ages, the dome had to be built with bricks. The dome is an architectural and engineering marvel because it was built entirely without interior scaffolding!!
interior view
we climbed 463 stairs to get to the top!!!!!
and we did it!!!
the view was amazing even though it was really foggy.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking and exploring Florence. At 5:30, Sam, MacKenzie, Erin, Christine, Karleen, and I decided to take a train to Cinque Terre. The train ride there was about 3 hours, and we got in a little after 8:30. Because it is winter and off-season, we were able to rent really cute apartments for only 16 euro each!! We stayed in the first town, Riomaggiore, and went out to dinner at (what seemed like) the only restaurant open. It was very good!
The next day we had planned on hiking between the towns, but it was really rainy and the trails were closed anyway. We opted instead for the train pass and hopped from town to town and explored. We quit before we hit the fifth town, however, because the weather got progressively rainier and colder. Despite the weather, Cinque Terre was incredibly beautiful and I can only imagine what it's like in the spring or summer!
on the train to the next town!
epic!
We stopped in Corniglia and had lunch at the only restaurant that was open. I had an excellent spaghetti al'ragu that was perfect after being out in the cold and rainy weather! We also had a bottle of wine, the restaurant's own label. It was really good, and the nice man at the restaurant was delighted to hear we were from Seattle, where he had travelled many times, and he comped us the bottle!
Sam, MacKenzie, and I decided to head back to Rome that night while the other girls stayed an extra night. The train was long but it felt good to get back into my own bed and sleep. Today, like most of my Sundays here, was laid back and relaxing, and spent doing my reading for class tomorrow and uploading the hundreds of pictures from the weekend.
This week in class is Vatican week, so stay tuned!
Ciao!
2 comments:
Nice pics! it even looks beautiful in the rain!
Love,
Mom
I thought it was weird that Galileo would get such an ostentatious tomb (seeing as he lived out his days under house arrest because of the church), but I guess they only built it several decades after his death.
Also, that's not Dante's tomb. Florence built that after they decided that Dante's fame would do them good, 500 years after his death.
Not allowing pictures is such crap. The only harm is from flash, and you can just charge an exorbitant fine to pay for restoration.
Don't delete me bro
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