Skip to main content

Forum and Colosseum

By
This weekend (Feb. 6-8) Sara and I made a point of going to visit the downtown area. On Friday, however, I visited the Instituto Nazionale per la Grafica behind the Trevi Fountain with my printmaking class. We saw original prints by Durer, Rembrandt, Piranesi, Goya, and others, as well as the original plates for a Piranesi print and a couple other artists. It was raining, though, so I didn't go see anything else that day.



Saturday we went to the Palatine Hill museum and the Forum Romanum (Roman Republican forum). I can't post all my pictures here because I took so many, but it was great to see all the buildings that I've been studying and can identify on sight by now. We spent several hours climbing all over the site looking at everything. One of the most impressive ruins is the Basilica of Maxentius, which is just immensely large. The Museo Palatino (Palatine Hill) isn't quite as interesting because it was just a lot of brick walls from houses--first the patricians and then the imperial family had their homes there, overlooking the valley of the Forum.




Today, Sunday, we got up early to go see the Colosseum. Note to anyone thinking about visiting Rome: Be sure to buy your ticket for the Colosseum in advance! The ticket is a combo ticket for the Colosseum, Palatine, and Forum, and lasts for two days, so I'd recommend doing what we did: spend one day in the Forum and Palatine, and go the next day to the Colosseum. The line for tickets at the Colosseum is extremely long and slow, while there was no line at all at the ticket office at the entrance to the Palatine. Since we already had tickets, we were able to walk right into the Colosseum without waiting! And go early, it gets crowded. Still, it's something that everyone has to see, and you can get great views of the Arch of Constantine from the upper level.



After the Colosseum we went to the Campidoglio, the piazza on top of the Capitoline Hill designed by Michelangelo (behind the Vittoriano monument), where the Capitoline Museums are now located. From behind this piazza you can really see the Forum well, and the piazza itself is very pretty. Tonight I'm making black bean soup and working on my new printmaking project, drypoint engraving!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Voter's Guide: Local Elections 2016

By
I spent a long time researching different local races and some of the ballot measures here in Santa Clara County.  In case you're on the fence or want some further information to guide your voting, I've compiled my thoughts here. Selection Methodology I have three tiers for selecting  candidates. 1. Alignment on Issues:  I will choose the candidate who is most closely aligned with me on the issues I think are important. 2. Experience and Education:  All other things being equal, I will choose the candidate who has the most knowledge of what is required for the position, either through education, previous experience, or active participation in similar positions. 3. Women and Minorities:  All other things being equal (#1 and #2 above), I will choose candidates who are women or minorities in order to increase the diversity of voices of our elected officials.  It's my own personal form of affirmative action. The Issues We're fortunate enough to live in a place
Post a Comment
Read more

Housing Affordability in the Bay Area: An Architectural Perspective

By
The Bay Area's housing crisis has gained a status akin to the weather: We can't help but mention it whenever two or more Bay Area residents are gathered together, and we feel there's equally nothing we can do to change it.  But instead of the general praise given to the area's weather, there is general despair about the state of housing.  At least among the twenty-something set and construction industry professionals who make up my peers and colleagues, there are few answers and much criticism for the way we live here.  It's not dense enough, public transportation is a sham, and housing costs are outrageous.  Many of my peers agree that they would not live here at all except that their spouse/significant other works in the tech industry, without whose salary they could not afford to live here, but whose worth is so valued here that it makes little sense economically to live elsewhere.  Here in the Peninsula it's just as bad as in San Francisco ("the city&
Post a Comment
Read more

Book Review: "Theory and Design in the First Machine Age"

By
Reyner Banham 's Theory and Design in the First Machine Age (1960) is an engaging overview of the important theoretical developments of the early 20th century leading up to the "International Style" of the 1930s-40s.  Banham does a fairly good job, in my opinion, of avoiding excessive editorializing, although he has a clear viewpoint on the Modern Movement and finishes with a strong conclusion.  In opposition to his teacher, Nikolaus Pevsner , whose own history of modernism came out in 1936, Banham dismantled the " form follows function " credo that became the stereotype of modernism, arguing instead that formalism (a preoccupation with style and aesthetics) was an important, if not overriding, concern of Modern architects.  Two sections of the book struck me in particular: his analysis of Le Corbusier's famous book Vers une architecture (Toward a [new] architecture) from 1923, and his Conclusion (chapter 22), where he breaks the link between functionali
1 comment
Read more