Daily Updates
Week One: 24 September
24 September. Minkun Zhang Reporting:
After a stimulating night including a small soccer riot outside our hotel, we woke up extra-early for a 40-minute trek up to the Villa Giulia Museum. Villa Giulia was a converted 16th century country villa for Pope Julius III that now houses the most important Etruscan and antiquity collections in Italy. Today we concentrated on the Orientalizing Period, a time when Near Eastern empires heavily influenced Etruscan culture. Since merchants did not exist in Etruscan culture, Etruscan noblemen practiced gift exchanges with Near Eastern noblemen, which allowed a tremendous flow of goods, ideas, and technology into Etruria. The day included three presentations; Claire talked about the famous Marriage Sarcophagus, and Jackie enlightened us about Greek pottery found in Italy. (Our visiting professor reminded us that there is more Greek pottery found in Italy than Greece; you learn something new everyday.) Dan later discussed the Apollo Statue from Veii, an archaic statue that is believed to be Apollo. Four hours after we first stepped into the museum, we finished our tour and were glad to be able to grab some food. Today is the last day we will be staying in Rome for two weeks, so many of us are busy doing laundry and completing errands. Around 6pm, we all gathered at Professor Ulrich's apartment for some wine and cheese. Everyone enjoyed themselves and we practically ate everything he had. Afterwards half of us went grocery shopping while the other half went to the Dartmouth Rome Center to pack up the textbooks we are bringing for our first road trip. Overall, it has been a hectic day, everyone is excited for this road trip and hopefully everything will go smoothly tomorrow.
Everyone is ready to leave the museum after 4 hours of looking at artifacts
Subway sandwichs, we should be so ashamed
A toast... to something
Group gathered at the steps of a temple ready for the first briefing
Dan describing how awesome the Apollo statue is
The Apollo Statue
Wine and cheese party
We are so lost
The girls waiting to get into the hotel