Monday, July 20th

Today marks the start of our last week of class. We started the day with Mona's class at 10:00. For the first hour of class, we discussed the Ancient Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This subject was especially interesting because Mona has published work on the piece that brings to light a very interesting interpretation of the story. After filling out our course evaluations for Mona's class, we broke for lunch.

Yogesh, Peter, Laura, and Alexandra presenting Cain

After our lunch break, we had our final group presentation on Lord Byron's version of the Cain and Abel story. The group presenting was Peter, Yogesh, Alexandra, and Laura and they led the class in a discussion of the play. For the remainder of class, we reviewed for our test on sacrifice this Wednesday. The test review covered all of the exam and Mona explained each of the questions. Her testing philosophy is to minimize the stress, while ensuring that we still learn the material. This is a very nice change compared to many of my classes at UW.

On the way to the Pantheon

After an hour break, we met at 3:00 in front of the Rome Center for art history. We started my walking to the Pantheon where Alina began her presentations on the obelisks of Rome. She included a handout that had a really cool graphic of all the obelisks of Rome and their respective heights. After the Pantheon, we saw the Elephant obelisk, the obelisk at Montecitorio, and after a five minute walk, we ended at Quirnal obelisk. The obelisks were originally brought to Rome by Augustus as a show of the Roman conquest of Egypt.

Alina is all smiles to start her presentation in the Piazza della Rotunda

After Alina's excellent presentation, we walked to San Andrea al Quirinale. Cat began presenting outside of the church, but the facade of the church was under construction and traffic from the nearby street forced us to move inside. The church was designed by Bernini for the Jesuits to commemorate St. Andrew and is shaped like an oval. Bernini had a huge budget for the church, however he apparently was only paid with a daily loaf of bread. As this trip has unfolded, it seems that Bernini becomes more amazing with every anecdote we hear and work we see. After explaining the interior of the church, we toured several other rooms of the church and were allowed to visit the sacristy. Lisa had never seen this room before and it was decorated with a large ceiling fresco and smelled of old wood.

Cat enjoying the San Andrea al Quirinale after her presentation

We were then going to visit San Carlino, a similarily ovular church designed by Borromini. Unfortunately, the church was closed :( Lisa then announced that she was treating us to gelato at Gelateria al Teatro, which is located west of Piazza Navona, and a few minutes walk from my apartment. It is my favorite gelateria, and has many obscure flavors such as Tartufo (chocolate truffle) and red plum.

-Peter