I have been in Italy for over a week now. That is so WEIRD to think about. I have adjusted a lot I feel, it is weird to get used to hanging out with a whole new group of people, they are very different than my friends in Texas or at school.
The one thing that I am really going to love will be our field trips (Wednesday and Friday of most weeks!) This week on Wednesday we walked around Orvieto and on Friday we went to Tivoli to see Hadrian’s villa and the villa de Este.
Wednesday: We met the mom of one of our two directors, her name is Erica and she came over here as a grad student, met Claudio’s (our director) father and has been living here ever since. She is an art historian and she took us through Il duomo and Signorelli’s chapel. Both of which were absolutely beautiful and she gave us a lot of information on both. It was nice to do a private guided tour. After the church Claudio took us on a walk and we went to the old clock tower and climbed to the top from which we could see three of the four centers of power, the other we were standing on. The centers of power were religion, money, military, and politics. Then we took a walk to the medieval quarter of town and looked at some caves and the old main entry gate and original church in town. After that we took a break for lunch. After lunch it was raining (yay!) and we went to look at the “Orvieto underground” which has much history and has been used throughout the occupation of the town for different purposes. It was really interesting because Claudio told us the popular explanation for much of caves as well as what he really thought. It was a really good chance to see a lot of the history of Orvieto as well as the things they are famous for.
Friday: In the morning we went to Hadrian’s villa in Tivoli, the villa complex was HUGE (and we didn’t even walk through all of it. This villa known for the building techniques and monumental scale as well as the art throughout the villa. Many important Roman copies of Greek sculpture were found here. The complex was absolutely monumental, and to imagine anyone actually living there took my breath away. It was also great to see copies of many of the artworks I have looked at in classes in college. After a nice lunch in Tivoli we set out for the villa de este, which was once the villa of a cardinal and has some of the most breathtaking gardens in the whole world. We got there just in time to see the organ fountain which is this large fountain in which the movement of the water makes the organ play, the fountain itself wasn’t crazy of extravagant but the technology behind it is very interesting. Some of the other fountains in the gardens were amazing, as were many of the fountains. The inside of the villa is also well decorated with the art of numerous artists. As with Hadrian’s villa it is hard form me to fathom people living in a place as beautiful as the Villa de Este.
Weekend: The rest of the weekend as been fun and relaxing we went out both nights and kind of hung around during the day, working on homework, reading, walking the lifestyle is slower paced so weekends have just been about adjusting to that.
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