Week Three

So this marks the end of my third week in Rome. I am starting to get settled in. The weather still hasn't been great. It rains a lot, but is really cold. I even went out a bought a down comforter for my bed! Who knew it would be this cold in southern Italy?! But then again our heat is terrible and is only on for something like 6 hours per day. I'm so glad that I brought my fleece blanket that Dan bought me for Christmas. I can wrap up in it even when I'm in the living room doing work on my computer. I am really hoping that this weather get's better soon. We are all feeling pretty miserable about it.

Monday we had a project due that is a sketching assignment for Theory class. It is pretty interesting because we never really did much hand drawing in Boston, so this is helping to practice. We had to analyze a piazza near where we live in Trastevere and design one sheet to demonstrate what we observed of the space. I think I did a pretty good job. This week we got a new assignment to pass in before we leave for Campagna. It was to compare two museums we visited, the Ara Pacis Museum and the Centrale Montemartini. They were both so interesting in their own ways.

The Ara Pacis was by Richard Meyer who is a pretty well known American architect and is one of the only really modern style buildings in Rome. I really really enjoyed it and hopefully I will get to go see Meyer's other project outside of Rome, the Jubilee church. The museum just houses the one artifact that is the Ara Pacis. It is right on the river and next to the Mausoleum of Augustus. The best part I thought was there was a fountain and waterfall outside along a wall made of travertine. We arrived at the museum early in the morning so the early light was so beautiful on the water. I took a bunch of pictures of it.

Montemartini was really cool because it used to be a factory and they renovated it to turn it into a museum, leaving some of the machines in the building, creating a really interesting juxtaposition between the white sculptures and the machines. The coolest part was there was a huge statue of Athena in the center and then there were also parts of what must have been a gigantic statue. There was a huge arm and hand and lots of kids took pictures with it. The room of the museum where these statues were was the main room of the factory and the installation was meant to look like a basilica whereas the other main room was set up to look like a villa with one whole wall being a huuuuge machine. The floor had parts of a mosaic from a real villa and there was a staircase where you could go up and look at it from above. It was so beautiful.

This week we are basically just preparing for our trip to Campania and then from Naples a bunch of us are going to be taking a ferry to Sicily. I am really excited because it is going to be our first thing that we are doing without teachers. I think the whole week is going to be really fun and it should be nice to have a little break from schoolwork.