Santa Maria in Trastevere and the last week of classes

Sorry about the gap between posts, it has been a pretty busy week finishing up our urban analysis projects. I guess the concept of staying up most of the weekend before a project is due is alive and well in Italy also... I was hoping that it was just a DC thing. Oh well... at least watching the sun rise from studio in January involves

vendors selling fruit and vegetables

and 60 degree temperatures

and not two feet of snow like in DC.

In addition to working on our studio projects and going to Italian class, our history class started last week. So far it seems like it will be amazing. The first day was spent trekking through the Roman Forum, learning about its importance as a symbol, as a meeting place, and as a tool of expansion for the Roman Empire. It was incredible, even the ruins are impressive, but the whole complex must have been truly amazing.

The massive Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine.

During yesterday's history class we hiked around our neighborhood, once known as the Campus Martius. The ancient layout of the city can still be seen in Rome's centro storico because the buildings that are currently standing used the foundations of the huge ancient buildings that once stood here to build upon. We learned that our studio, Palazzo Pio, stands on what was once the Theater of Pompey, built in the 1st century B.C. They have done studies of the walls of our building and found that the cores of some of the walls are actually the original walls from the complex that stood here... over two thousand years ago. Apparently when we climb the stairs to our studio, we're climbing past what was once a temple to Venus. Crazy, right?

Last week, we crossed the Tiber to visit Santa Maria in Trastevere as one of the sites for our studio project. Every church I've seen is beautiful in a unique way and this one had a coffered gold leaf ceiling that was absolutely amazing. It also had a huge piazza and a pretty big octagonal (spitting) fountain that had a lot of room for people to sit and sketch on.
Santa Maria in Trastevere and its piazza.

The row of expressive statues above the entrance.

Two of the statues and the belltower.

Candles in a side aisle.

One of the beautiful chapels on the left side of the church.

Some locals enjoying the fountain.

Anyway, sorry for the rambling nature of this post. We're leaving for southern Italy on Thursday for about a week and a half, so hopefully we'll have some awesome pictures and things to tell when we get back.

Dinner at Joe Rivetto's - 1-15-07

The landlord of our apartments (and owner of the restaurant and gelateria in our building) was kind enough to feed all the Catholic and UWashington kids living in his building at his restaurant... and good times were had by all.



Maureen in the middle of getting a rose from Spiro... I can only imagine what is going through her head right now.








When Dave Shove-Brown isn't busy being our professor, he's a backup vocalist for Earth Wind and Fire (apparently).









Jake, Brian, and Dan Mayo... "Am I in this?"








Connie, Matt, Jeff from UWashington, Lauren P, Lauren G, and someone whose name I don't know yet...

Vikki and Evan











The big kids' table







Matt, Amy, Me, and Mo






Matt and Amy

Piazza Navona

Piazza Navona was the space I selected for analysis from the list of optional locations. It is one of my favorite places in Rome and is just five minutes from the Campo di Fiori. It is a huge ellipse, about two or two and a half football fields long, circled by buildings on all sides, smack dab in the middle of Rome... it is an awesome place to stumble onto if you're not looking for it, coming out of Rome's narrow alleyways and suddenly being in this enormous open space.

There are several restaurants and shops along its edge, along with Borromini's church of Sant'Agnese in Agone on the west side of the piazza. In the center, in front of the church, is Bernini's beautiful Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi (Fountain of Four Rivers). Unfortunately, it is under construction at the moment and largely covered up. There are also two smaller fountains at either end of the ellipse.



Here are some of Piazza Navona's outdoor cafes and restaurants.



















Here are some pictures of Sant'Agnese in Agone, with its distinctive set of twin belltowers and concave facade.





















Here are some details from the amazing piazza fountains.

Update

It has been a busy few days for the architecture kids: our first project is due next Thursday, so we've spent the last several days doing site visits and field sketching at the Campidoglio, Villa Giulia, and a site of our choice (either Piazza Navona, St. Peter's Square, or the Spanish Steps.) Fortunately, the weather here has been amazing: highs in the 60s every day, lots of sun, and the extended forecast looks like it will stay that way. People still have flowers blooming on their balconies here, which makes me feel somewhat guilty that the midwest is currently hovering around 30 and covered by a sheet of ice. Some of the other students have already done a great job of describing some of the sites we've been to, so I will try not to beat a dead horse by repeating them, I'll just post some pictures and some thoughts.


The Campidoglio is an amazing public space that lies just above the Roman Forum and is wedged behind the huge and offensive Victor Emmanuele II monument, or "the wedding cake". Designed by Michelangelo, it is an epic flight of stairs that leads up to a courtyard with an intricate and beautiful elliptical paving design. The courtyard is flanked by buildings on three sides. On the left and right sides are museums holding ancient Roman art, and the building directly across from the stairs with the clocktower holds the offices of the mayor. The Campidoglio also features some great equestrian statues, 2 at the top of the stairs and one at the center of the courtyard.

I don't have any pictures of the front of the Victor Emmanuele Monument yet, but it is basically a prime architectural example of how to turn your back on history and show disrespect to the context of a site. In the picture to the left, it is the taller building behind the museum in the foreground. It is proportionally too massive, it is blindingly white, and it is located in one of the most prominent sites in Rome (at the end of the Via del Corso and the Corso Vittorio Emmanuele), so all the major traffic in the city bends around it. Imagine if at the west end of the National Mall, the Lincoln Memorial were 150 feet high, 300 feet wide and covered in statues of Winged Victory and Abraham Lincoln on horseback holding a sword. This is basically what the VEII Monument does to Capitoline Hill. It wouldn't be quite as bad if it didn't completely overwhelm the beautiful Campidoglio and tower above the Roman Forum, which is just a stone's throw away. The Romans hate it and now that I know more about the history of the area, it seems more and more like a slap in the face. Basically, Michelangelo is spinning in his grave. But enough about that. Basically, the Campidoglio is exactly the opposite of the VEII Monument: it is beautiful, sensitive to its historical surroundings, and was designed with the whole city in mind.

Our next site was the Villa Giulia, a former papal retreat and now a museum of Etruscan artifacts. The facade looks like a "typical" Renaissance villa (which isn't to say that it isn't beautiful, because it is), but the special qualities of this building seem to be more in how the building encloses space rather than the building itself (although the curving arcade is pretty amazing). The facade and the building behind it serve as a gateway to the awesome sequence of garden spaces behind them.

First is a large rectangular garden with gravel paths, framed by the semi-circular arcade.






















Next is the Nympheum, a sunken courtyard with water and caryatids reached by winding stairs.
















There are also side gardens that lead to the gardens behind the Nympheum, with paths delineated by shrubs and flowers, and a reproduced Etruscan temple.

Various pictures from our first week

Here are some pictures of some of the things we've done and seen around the city.









The view of our apartments from the window of "The Prow" (studio student lounge overlooking the Campo di Fiori) at night.











A fish spout on the fountain in front of the Pantheon.











A view of the Roman Forum from the back of the Campidoglio.








One of the statues at the entrance to the Campidoglio.











A curving arcade in Villa Giulia.











The Piazza del Popolo, on the way back to studio from Villa Giulia.

Amy, Matt, and Will engaging in some late-night studio shenanigans.

Roma!

After some long trips over, our group all arrived in Rome by last Friday night and settled into our apartments. Campo di Fiori is an awesome place to live, it is right in the middle of everything and there's always something going on. So far, it has been beautiful here, it hardly feels like winter and the surroundings are pretty amazing. It is hard to describe what it is like to actually live here... we're all getting used to being in such a truly foreign place.

We started classes on Monday, settled into our studio spaces, and started our first project, which is an urban analysis of different Roman sites. The first site we visited was the Pantheon, which was pretty incredible. It's great to be living about five minutes away from a building with so much history and importance. Tomorrow we are visiting Michelangelo's Campidoglio to photograph and field sketch for our projects. In short, it is amazing to actually be here.