Daily Updates
Week One: 19 September
19 September. Prof. Ulrich Reporting:
On our first full day in Rome we awoke to the sound of rain, but by the time we assembled the skies had cleared and we headed out for our first orientation in and around the streets and major monuments of central Rome. I think the students got a good idea of what I meant when I advised them during our first meetings in Hanover to bring comfortable walking shoes. From the Albergo Sole Hotel we walked to the Piazza Farnese, where we examined the immense granite tubs that once stood in the third-century Baths of Caracalla, to the Palazzo Spada, with its stuccoed heroic images of Republican and Imperial Roman heroes, to the old ghetto of Rome (kosher pizzerias), through the Circus Flaminius, up the Capitoline, down into the Roman Forum, over to the Imperial fora, up to the Quirinal Hill, down to the Trevi fountain, and finally to the Pantheon. Once again this year I've been told by my students that I walk from place to place at a good clip; we tend to spread out like so many ducklings. From now on our progress will be related by the students themselves, and we all look forward to keeping and preserving this record of our fall in Italy.
The group goes wild at the Acqua Marcia. Acqua, acqua, everywhere.
The first group photo.