Even More Dead Things!

Wow, it's been a busy week. Instead of our usual Tuesday and Wednesday field trips, we had an additional Thursday field trip. That, added with an Italian quiz, Latin project translation, research proposal and the entire book we have to read for Ancient City- People are going a little bit crazy!
Despite the craziness though, we did get to see some cool places this week!
TUESSSDAY- We spent another full day around the forum area. We started out at the Theatre of Pompey, where you can see how the modern street plans still reflect the design of the theatre.

Like this cool curvy building

We also got to go down to the basement of a restaurant that was built over the theatre. The basement is basically the original structure of the theatre, and the restaurant uses it as another eating room. Dinner in the theatre of Pompey would be amazing. Unfortunately, the restaurant is ridiculously expensive, as any respectful fancy Italian restaurant should be. We continued from the theatre to the forum of Caesar and after a pigeon-heavy lunch (as in, we were surrounded. Not eating them) we had a tour of the Capitoline museum, where it was apparently French tour day. Because EVERYONE was French. Anyways...

On Wednesday we got to make up the second half of the field trip that got cancelled next week- Nemi and Velletri. At Nemi we saw the remains of an ancient temple to Diana where people would come to be healed and give thanks. In Velletri we saw an amazing relief sarcophagus and another relief that somewhat inspired my semester research project. Hurrah!

Today was one of the cool tomb days. Those are becoming my favorite! We started the day at the Villa Pamphili down the road from the Centro where we saw a tomb called a Columbarium, which was painted and incredible. 

After this we went to the Jewish Catacombs on the other side of town. Which was AWESOME. It's just a giant system of underground tunnels with tombs everywhere, so we got to walk around with flashlights, read Greek inscriptions and find bones. Luckily we only saw the spiders on our way out. I got some helpful pictures/info for what I will hopefully be researching this summer, and I got to show off some knowledge based on last summer's research! And everyone else got to make fun of me in the Jewish Catacombs. But look- MENORAH. 

(And other Jewish symbols) These were everywhere

When we got out of the Catacombs, a miracle happened- it was suddenly spring! Birds chirping, children playing, daisies blooming! Let's hope this lasts, so I can enjoy it from my window while I sit inside studying for my Italian quiz... :/