I'm living at the International Collegiate Center for Classical Studies in the Monteverde neighborhood of Rome, high atop the Janiculum Hill on the western side of Rome. It's a prime location: an easy half-hour's walk East across the Tiber to the Roman Forum, and (it appears to me) an equidistant walk to the Vatican. All 25 of us students are living here, sharing two delicious meals a day cooked in-house. It seems that we're eating about twice as much as the average Italian, thanks to the kitchen's advantageous blending of American and Italian mealtime customs. They know from plenty of experience, I'm sure, that American students can't be satisfied by the scant Italian breakfast of a measly biscotto and coffee, so we get a full-on American breakfast each morning, with a copious range of cereals, fruit, yogurt, a hot item, and plenty of industrial-strength coffee to stuff ourselves on. At dinner time, though, thankfully, we do things the Italian way: every night, we have a pasta dish to start; a salad between courses; a meat dish and vegetable; and, finally, dessert and coffee to finish. It's a schedule I could definitely get used to but probably shouldn't!
Between the feasts that bookend my days, I've been soaking up a huge amount of information on and first-hand exposure to archaic and Republican history, archaeology, art and architecture this week. We had a couple of half-days early in the week to break us in, and today and yesterday have been full days on site outside of Rome. I've gotten well oriented to the topography of Rome. One of my favorite lessons of the week: you can remember the names and locations of Rome's seven hills by starting with the Capitoline in the Northwest and moving clockwise according to the following pneumonic phrase: Can Queen Victoria Eat Cold Apple Pie? Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Appenine, Palatine. I've used that trick a hundred times this week already. I'm getting to know in-depth many of the important monuments in Rome, too. We've had on-site introductions by prominent archaeologists to the San' Omobono temple complex in the Forum Boarium and the Regia in the Roman Forum, and I'm beginning to piece together in my head the development of the city center from its earliest days. Yesterday and today, we've gone farther afield to learn more about Rome's early neighbors, the Etruscans and the Latins. Yesterday, we explored tomb complexes at Tarquinia and Cerveteri, and today we saw temple sites at Lavinium (the city Aeneas is said to have founded) and Tusculum. Imagine descending into enormous chamber tombs, some of them from the 7th century B.C., and seeing firsthand the richly colored, elaborate paintings on the walls (Tarquinia) and walking around the rooms where sarcophagi of entire families were arranged along with hoards of luxurious grave-goods (Cerveteri). As the name "necropolis" suggests, the experience of walking around these sites is like wandering around an ancient city: the tomb constructors have gone to incredible lengths to make their tombs resemble homes of the living, and (especially at Cerveteri) they are laid as in a real city, even to the extent of featuring fantastic mansion-style tombs alongside condominium-style smaller tombs arranged neatly and economically alongside the roads for the less well-off. Today's sites were less immediately evocative -- although they certainly gained something from their lush setting in the Alban Hills -- but I found myself surprisingly enthralled by the technical details of their construction. The highlight of my day today was a lecture on the Romans' development and use of concrete. Maybe I've got something of an engineer in me after all.
Apart from the main facts of life here -- accommodation and the program itself -- I've had a couple of added social bonuses this week. First, serendipitously, it turns out that a friendly acquaintance from Brown is also staying at the Centro supervising a different program. We've taken up running together in the mornings when possible, and now I have another friend to explore the city with in my down time. Second, another friend from my Bristol days, an Italian, is currently studying in Rome, and she came to visit me here in Monteverde the other day. I'm hoping I'll see more of her in the coming week before she heads back to Sicily for the summer.
It's impossible to report fully or to do justice to my experiences here, and I feel the deficiency of my account especially keenly because it's Italy we're talking about here -- Italy is a place to be felt, tasted, heard, and not really to be committed to a page in black and white. There's no way I can adequately describe a cool breeze wafting off the Tyrrhenian Sea felt on an Tuscan hilltop; the savor of risotto dyed pitch black with squid ink (eaten at a nearby Sicilian restaurant on my first night here) or wild boar and hare (local specialties I've tried at lunch on our day trips); or the sound of goats bleating loudly in the Alban Hills in competition with a professor lecturing on an ancient amphitheatre. Italy is also, of course, to be seen, and to share that aspect with you as best I can, I've posted a batch of my pictures. Enjoy!
Rome: Week 1 |
No comments:
Post a Comment