Daily Updates
Week Four: 15 October
15 October. Reporting:
Today we hopped on the local bus and headed out to Palestrina, a town about 20 miles out of Rome. Palestrina is the ancient Roman town of Praeneste, which is home to the enormous sanctuary to Fortuna PrimigeniaÑliterally "Fortuna the First-Born." Thanks to the liberationist allied troops who swept through Palestrina in 1944 and levelled much of the town, there is very little development around many sections of the sanctuary. Therefore, we had the wonderful opportunity of exploring this incredible ruin. The sanctuary was built in the late second century B.C., probably between 120 and 100 B.C., as an enormous temple complex. It was built into the hillside of Praeneste and consisted of a series of terraces leading up to a large amphitheatre structure and round "tholos" shrine at the very top. Pilgrims could come to visit various sacred caves, a sacred well, some sacred prophetic oaken tablets, and the shrine to Fortuna at the very summit. As a group, we began at the base of the sanctuary and worked our way towards the top. We were able to see some of the beautiful mosaics still intact on the floors of the sacred caves (ex. the fish mosaic,) as well as others that have been carefully removed to the museum that now stands at the summit (ex. the Nilotic mosaic.) We were also able to study the innovative architecture of the sanctuary; this structure is an important architectural landmark in that it's one of the first and best preserved examples of large-scale concrete construction in the Roman world. After exploring the sanctuary and its museum, half of the group headed home to Rome and others joined Prof. Ulrich on a hike to the next town at the very summit of the hill. The hike was great. There was a small town and the ruins of a mediaeval castle, not to mention an outstanding view!