325: Monday, August 16

Monday morning, the 16th of August, we had our first class in Rome. It was our first formal meeting as a group in a new country with completely new surroundings. At that point, with the Colosseum at the top of the list for site visits, and I had no idea what exactly to expect of Rome. It is easy to get a picture in your mind from discussions and photos in textbooks, but nothing really prepares you for what real life holds. From the moment we stepped into Italy, I think that my perspective started to change. And as we slowly became familiar with more places in this country, my expectations for what the first day visit into Rome would hold continually changed.

I have always thought of the ancient structures in Rome to be beautiful artwork, which they truly are. Millions of people travel thousands of miles in order to see the spectacular work that people created in history. It boggles our minds to try and understand how they successfully completed such complicated structures and paintings with the resources that were available. I have always had an ambition to see such beauty in person, in order to truly capture how ancient and magnificent structures such as the Colosseum are. However, in the past I had never considered much beyond the physical appearance of ancient art and architecture. Until Monday morning, I spent most of time trying to imagine what things like the Colosseum physically look like.

We began our class on Monday morning by discussing the books that we will be assigned to read during the semester, and tying them into our visits. I specifically remember our conversation about the book The Italians. In the forward, the author explained the tedious task that a painter faced when attempting to paint his mother. The author expressed the huge thought process that was in the painter’s mind before he began. For example, author Luigi Barzini says, “The Mother, in this case, is notoriously distinguished… I was determined to the most honest job of portraiture I possibly could.” This really made me start to think about the purpose behind an artist. They have a specific goal in mind when creating a new masterpiece, which takes great amounts of contemplation before the artwork is even started. I cannot imagine the amount of concentration and planning that come into a piece of art, whether in the form of a painting, sculpture, building, or any other way.

Thinking about art in this way made me look at the Colosseum in a whole new way. For example, I realized that there was so much more to the building then the ancient ruins we see today. It is not something that was created for people to look at later in life; the Colosseum was built for very specific purposes that I had never thought too deeply about before. It was a place of entertainment, where thousands of people flocked in order to experience athletic events that we cannot even imagine today.

Thinking about all these new ideas during the morning class helped me to go into the day’s visit with a whole new perspective. I didn’t look at the Colosseum as something that people just come to look at and marvel at the fact that the building is still standing. I found myself trying as hard as possible to picture the building as it was years and years ago. I tried to see the purpose that the Colosseum was built for. Looking with this new perspective helped me appreciate the trip to the Colosseum even more than I had expected, and leaves me curious to discover more.