Yesterday was an all day adventure trying to find my way around the city. Whenever I got lost, I would take it as a learning experience. I find it is better to figure your way around the city rather than follow someone else around. Towards the end of the day, we were given a short tour of the surrounding area of the institute of places that we should know.
Today, Sunday, January 9, we went to the main office of the Pantheon Institute to pick out courses and receive our Italian cell phones. I am enrolling in the five following classes: Architectural Analysis, Survey of the Masters and Monuments of Rome, Saint Peter's and the Vatican: the Papacy and Architecture, Digital Photography: Capturing Rome, and Italian Language I. I am very excited tomorrow to start my classes, the first which is Digital Photography.
Today, Caitlin and I (the only two Connecticut College students) decided to get a cappuccino at an outdoor cafe near the Pantheon. The Institute is right across the street from the Pantheon. Seeing the building in person, instead of just observing it in a textbook, is an amazing sight!
The history of the Pantheon is pretty amazing. It was built in 126 AD as a temple to all the gods of Ancient Rome. It is nearly 2,000 years old and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The facade is a temple front with large Corinthian columns along its portico while the building itself is circular. The interior contains an oculus, a circular opening at the top of the dome. Its placement was originally designed to allow worshippers to have a direct view into the heavens. The "light of heaven" travels from the oculus in the form of a beam. It is interesting to know that in the sixth century the Pantheon was transformed into a Catholic Church and is still used as a church today. I am sure I will be visiting the Pantheon again on many occasions. Currently, they are doing renovations to the facade and the scaffolding takes away from it beauty
Hey! Two days, no blog post! What's up?? Some of us are trying to live vicariously through you, you know. Let's go - post something about some handsome Italian guy buying you a glass of wine outside the Coliseum or something. ;o)
ReplyDeleteHaha as soon as that happens I will make sure to write about it!
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