If you won a contest and got to go to Rome for a week, what would you do? What would you want to see first? The Colosseum, the Vatican, the Catacombs, the Baths of Diocletion? How about the markets, the streets of elegant shops, the night life? Wine? Coffee? Gelato, anyone?
While enjoying the tourist life, ten CAT honors students enrolled in this semester’s Global Arts: Up-Close and In-Person, have decided to study some things that interest them even more, sights and sounds they could only experience in Italy. Nick Silvestri will search out Rome’s many fountains and their creators. Ancient portraiture in sculpture interests Nastasha Beatty, while Cesar Caceres will compare Pompeii’s colorful mosaics with mosaics on the walls of Saint Peter’s.
We’ve changed some dollars into euros and we’re almost packed. We leave this Thursday, February 28th, and we know that the week will fly by. After getting around on our own in Rome, we’ll go north by train and tour Renaissance Florence in twelve short hours; and south to wander the ruins and remains of Pompeii. Will we have time to re-visit the places we loved the most?
Everyone knows that this is just a taste of Italy. By the time we are over jet-lag and are comfortable saying grazie and buona sera, we’ll be back home. But we won’t be the same travelers. Travel makes your life bigger, and we’re sure that this will simply be our first trip to Italy.
— Professor Lisa Rabinowitz
