Day Twenty-Six

We met as a group at one of my favorite coffee bars in all of Rome, San Eustachio. After the morning caffe, we walked up to Piazza del Popolo. This is one of my favorite piazzas so far, it was wide open and modeled after the piazza at St. Peter's. We sat on the steps of the giant Egyptian obelisk in the center and listened to a couple presentations by Erin and Lauren. Notice the sky, this is the first overcast day we've had since we got to Rome, the clouds are a welcome sight, they kept it relatively cool today, though it's still very muggy...

Then we visited the Ara Pacis, an altar to Augustan peace. Joey gave a really great presentation about Augustus and about the monument itself. Nice work Joey. Nice name too. In the basement of the building housing the Ara Pacis is an exhibit about a designer named Jean Prouve. It was a really great exhibit to see. He built many pieces of furniture and came up with some pretty innovative ways of using sheet steel. Also, he designed many houses and buildings, many having a modular construction and all exhibiting light, airy qualities. This exhibit really got me excited about the upcoming year at school. I liked his style, and some of his quotes were inspiring to me as I get ready to begin my first year of education in Industrial design....

"I am haunted by a passion to build."

"...man must not allow himself to plagiarize. He is on this earth to create."

"Architecture must come from industrial design, which will bring it into harmony with the achievements of science."

We were not allowed to take photos, but I found an image of my favorite piece of furniture that I saw today. I like this desk because even though it is constructed of heavy steel and wood, look how light it seems, as if it is floating above the ground.....

Day Eleven

Today we had presentations including Piazza Navona and the Catacombe di Priscilla On the way I managed a couple of self portraits in the security mirror on the bus and took a shot of this dog poking his head through the railings of what can only be a shop where they make carousel horses. This little doggy really made me miss Rocky, but I know that he is having a blast down on the farm and is getting plenty of love from Joanne and Trudi. I have never been in any catacombs before but have watched several shows about them on the history channel and am always fascinated by how far they sprawl beneath these old European citites. Rome has hundreds of miles of tunnels dug by the christians as burial grounds for their dead. The catacomb system we were in today stretched for 13 km and is home to 40,000 burials. It was cold, damp and dark, like a good catacomb should be. It twisted and turned through the carved out tufa. The walls are marked in various ways, including old christian symbols, my favorite being the anchor, of course. Other markings probably qualify as graffiti, people leaving their names and the date. I saw one from 1790, one from a scholar who used to study the catacombs, marked 1861, and some more recent from American soldiers during the war. I saw the states of Texas, Oklahoma and the city of Boston next to their names. Most of the tombs had been emptied to protect them from the visiting tour groups, however some were still sealed, including some tiny little infant tombs. At one point we even saw a skull in one! No photos were allowed so I snagged one from a resource at the Vatican.....it was very spooky down there....