location

History: Rome, Italy
The Legacy of the Ancient Romans

July 14 - August 7, 2008

History-Rome Location

Accommodations

Participants will reside in a centrally-located hotel in the heart of Rome. Rooms are triple occupancy.

UCLA Summer Sessions reserves the right to change the housing location. Should this become necessary, we will arrange comparable accommodations elsewhere.

Meals

Breakfast is provided at your hotel everyday. Students are responsible for all other meals during the program.

If you have strict dietary requirements, this program may not be able to accommodate your needs. Please let us know when you apply for this program if you have special dietary needs, as well as any medical or physical conditions. We will advise you accordingly.

Excursions

This program includes visits to the Roman and Imperal Fora, the Palatine, Colosseum, Baths of Caracalla, St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums, Medieval and Baroque churches, and Renaissance palaces. Also planned are full day excursions to Hadrian's Villa and Villa d'Este in Tivoli and to the ancient city of Pompeii. A complete schedule of excursions will be available at a later date.

Free time is built into this program for independent sightseeing. If you plan on traveling extensively, we recommend that you budget additional spending money.

Location

Our hotel is located in a district of Rome called the Campo Marzio ("The Field of Mars," Campus Martius in ancient times). It was a large, open area, outside the ancient city center, used as a training ground for Rome's soldiers. The Romans later built upon it, embellishing it with places for recreation and with temples. Today, Campo Marzio is the residential and business center of Rome. On our walks through this district, you will see: what remains of the Emperor Augustus' Mausoleum, a huge concrete and brick structure later pillaged for building material and later still converted into a bullring; Rome's only gothic church, Sta. Maria sopra Minerva; the Pantheon, or temple to all the gods, one of ancient Rome’s best preserved buildings, topped by an amazing concrete dome 140 feet across; Piazza Navona, a big pedestrian/restaurant zone, shaped like a racing track. (It was one in ancient times!), very active in the evenings with tourists, vendors, artists and musicians; and the Campo dei Fiori, a quaint piazza surrounded by picturesque apartments filled in the morning with fruit and vegetable dealers and at night with live music or political rallies (or sometimes both!).

One of our first walks will take us to the Villa Giulia Museum. It houses perhaps the best collection of art and artifacts from the mysterious race of the Etruscans, an ancient people of northern Italy who had tremendous cultural influence on Rome’s development.

Have you ever imagined walking in the footsteps of the ancient Romans? Well, when you walk down the Sacred Way into the heart of the Roman Forum, you will certainly feel their presence. This originally marshy swamp between the hills of Rome became the splendid commercial, political, and religious center of the ancient city for 1,000 years! Its grand structures are mainly ruins now, with a few well-preserved triumphal arches. We will investigate what remains of its meeting halls, temples and monuments. Then, we will ascend the Palatine Hill to view the substantial remnants of the Imperial Palaces from the 1^st Century AD to the 4^th Century AD.

Even the ancient Romans knew the use of shopping malls. The greatest were the Markets of Emperor Trajan (1^st Century AD). This impressive architectural complex of 150 stores stands still largely intact. We will explore its corridors, meeting halls and shops.

The ancient citadel, which was the stronghold of the Romans, the Capitoline Hill, became perhaps the most important and most symbolic of the Seven Hills of Rome; It is the place from which all modern capitals get their name. Redesigned with a grand oval piazza by Michelangelo, the Capitoline is also home to Rome’s two great public museums. From this hill, you can look down into the ruined Forum or across the skyline to the Vatican. You might even see a wedding party emerging into the piazza from Rome’s city hall!

We will wind our way through the little streets of Trastevere, the district of Rome "across the Tiber," where the "real " Romans claim to live and work, till we climb the highest hill of Rome, the Gianicolo, which offers spectacular, panoramic views of the city.

The seat of the papacy for nearly 2,000 years and the residence of the Popes since the 1500’s, the Vatican stands as a true wonder of human design and engineering, the work of 10 architects, 20 Popes, and dozens of artists over a period of 120 years! Besides the beautiful Basilica and the piazza, the Vatican Museums, housing art and artifacts from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, boggle the mind and overload the senses.

The ancient Romans thought very highly of relaxation during the imperial era, and the Emperors built huge entertainment palaces for the people of Rome. The Circus Maximus was where crowds of over 200,000 could cheer on their favorite horse racers or charioteers. The Baths of Caracalla could accommodate 1,500 bathers at one time and provided masseurs, games, concerts and many other amenities, at no charge! And, of course, there is the Colosseum, Rome’s great arena, the site of death and bloody spectacles for over 400 years.

On August 24, in the year 79 AD, twelve miles east of Naples in southern Italy, the long quiet volcano, Vesuvius, erupted with enormous force, raining down lava, ash and mud on the ancient towns around it. One of these was Pompeii, a small village that had boomed under the Roman Empire and become a very prosperous trading center of perhaps 20,000 people. However, Pompeii’s destruction by Vesuvius, the way it was covered over by ash, perfectly preserved much of its art, architecture and even furniture, providing us with a laboratory specimen of an ancient Roman town frozen forever in time. We will spend an entire day at Pompeii, exploring its streets, forum, arena, homes, and many other points of interest.

Some of the many churches we will visit are quite amazing. For example, the Basilica of S. Clemente, dates from the 12^th Century AD, but sits atop a predecessor from the 4^th Century, which sits atop an ancient Roman house and a pagan shrine of the 2^nd Century! We will make the journey down through these levels, deep below the streets, a real-life Indiana Jones adventure.

In the 4^th Century AD, Pope Liberius was instructed by the Virgin Mary in a vision to build a church to her where snow would fall in Rome. It was early August, but a snowfall was reported on Esquiline Hill, and the Pope carried out the directive. Every August 5^th, people from all over Rome and the world come to the Basilica of Sta. Maria Maggiore to celebrate its founding; hundreds of white flower petals are dropped from the ceiling to commemorate that miraculous snowfall of 16 centuries ago.

To escape the rigors of the capital and the heat of the summer, Emperor Hadrian had a huge, lavish villa built for himself in the hills east of Rome. A good portion of its structures are intact enough today to give us a sense of how the wealthy few lived in ancient times. From Hadrian’s Villa, we will travel up the road to a similar Renaissance hideaway, the Villa D’Este, where magnificent rows and terraces of fountains will offer a cool paradise that you won’t want to leave!

One of our last walks will take us to the Villa Borghese Museum, located in Rome’s largest public park. The museum houses some fine ancient pieces, but the real attraction that you wont want to miss, are the fabulous works by Bernini, the Baroque sculptor, such as his Apollo and Daphne. Bernini possessed an incredible gift for carving marble to look like flesh, and seeing these statues in person is the only way to truly appreciate them.