Rome Is Where the Heart Is: Visions of Villa Fountains on a Hot Day

Yesterday we had our last day trip with our whole study abroad group. Our favorite teacher from the Rome Center, Emilio, gave us a guided tour of Villa Farnese and Villa Lante. Both were owned by Cardinals and have ornate architecture as well as beautiful gardens. We went into the house on Villa Farnese and got to look at the amazing frescos inside the museum. It was interesting because a lot of the paintings contained figures from Christianity as well as ancient mythology. The last room was the best though. It had walls covered in maps from 1574. There was a world map and maps of each continent including what they conquered in North America. They also had portraits of the great explorers, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, and Ferdinand Magellan. The ceiling had many constellations including each of the zodiac. The cool thing about Italy is that you're always looking up, so that you can see the amazing artwork on all the ceilings! ;)

After Farnese, we went to Villa Lante. Here we explored all the gardens. It had many fountains that were all linear. They flowed directly down to one big fountain. It was so pretty! Davis had a great idea to race flowers and follow them down the fountain. I tied a knot in mine so I could identify it and somehow it made it through the plumbing and when it was the only one to pop up into the last pool of water we all screamed! It was so funny and so great.

We topped off the day by meeting up at Hard Rock Cafe (shhh ;) with Professor McCoy and we all got expensive American meals. I got a giant plate of nachos!

Today I went back to St. Peter's Basilica so that I could see the inside. It was absolutely amazing. It was so much bigger than I imagined and it held so much! There were sculptures, reliefs, and paintings everywhere. There were also keys everywhere since that's Peter's symbol. I also got to see Michelanglo's Pieta which was smaller than I imagined but so beautiful. I like his interpretation of the moment and even though it's not realistically accurate it's very ideally accurate. I like picturing the moment with Jesus at peace and Mary young. As I walked around and looked at everything I was overcome with the amount of passion that the church captured. So many people put in so much work into such a massive structure dedicated to a person as well as a religion. It made my existence feel very small and made me question what I'm passionate about.

Food for thought.

Ciao!

P.S. Get ready for a lot of pictures :D