Week 5!

This week was yet another packed week!  It was exciting however that we began exploring Vatican City!

After sketching we entered the labyrinth of the Vatican Museums, which took me nearly four hours to get though, not counting the several areas that were closed.  In the museum you are surrounded by not only things on display such as statues and paintings, but the very rooms themselves are triumphs of western art, including the Raphael rooms, and Sistine Chapel, whose ceiling was famously painted by one of my heroes, Michelangelo.  It was also excellent to see the exhibit of modern religious work, which isn't something typically associated with the Vatican.  Among the modern artists on display were Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse, Vincent Van Gogh, and Pablo Picasso.


The next day we returned to experience St. Peter's Basilica.  The human mind almost doesn't comprehend the size, nor the time and devotion that went into this church for years, and by the greatest minds of their time.  It's architects/artists (because they aren't mutually exclusive in this case) include Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno, and Bernini.  I also decided to climb up the stairs to the lantern of the dome, which gave me perhaps the best view (maybe excluding flying over Rome at low altitude as we landed after visiting Barcelona) of the city I could hope to get.

                                                                                      

We then had a great tour with Tom Rankin that explored themes of Sustainability in Rome, both in terms of how Rome has been sustainable, and how it is not.  His complaints are many of the same I've had since being here, mostly concerning vehicles and their pervasiveness, both in terms of parking and traffic.  It is also interesting to see the passive building techniques exercised by the Romans of the Middle Ages, and perhaps made me change my assumptions about the term "Dark Ages."  Rome in the Middle Ages was far more cleaver and resourceful than in the Empire, or the Renaissance.


Last but not least, we went on our second field trip to the region of Umbria, in central Italy.  I enjoyed Assisi and it's place in the world as the city of peace (owing this to St. Francis and St. Clair).  Spoleto had an incredible aqueduct/bridge from the Middle Ages that spanned a valley.  But I think I enjoyed the college town jive in Perugia as well perhaps my favorite church yet, Sant'Angelo, which was circular in plan (similar to Santo Stefano in Rome, but relied on it's natural materials rather than decoration.  It was an exhausting weekend, due to having traveled two weekends in a row, but it was definitely worth every second!