I know I am kind of on a school kick, but midterms have just finished and I am feeling pretty good about everything to do with classes right now. I thought that taking in classes in Rome would do nothing but prevent me from spending all my time exploring Italy and Europe, but the experience of actually taking classes here has been invaluable. While they can seem like nothing but a nuisance when trying to book cheap flights to other places in Europe, the classes offered here have seriously expanded my knowledge of Italian history and culture and actually provided me a great way to explore the museums in the city! All of the pictures included in this post were taken in class, as part of the actual weekly site visits offered instead of classroom lectures.
I love the classes here! Rome is definitely one of the best cities in the world to see art, and it’s no surprise that studying art history here is utterly amazing. I am taking an art history class here, and it is absolutely unbelievable to have a class focused on the art of Raphael while sitting on the floor of Chigi Villa or the Galleria Borghese looking directly at examples of his work. I am a history major, but I’ve largely been uninterested in art history because I frequently feel it lacks the hands-on quality of other historical disciplines. That’s just not the case here. Here, we have classes on the way Renaissance architects pulled lessons from the Colosseum while sitting in front of the actual Colosseum. It’s kind of a surreal experience, but it certainly makes these classes amazingly memorable!
I am also taking a museum class that has been much more amazing than I had thought it could be. Museum theory sounds like an incredibly boring subject, but with weekly visits to the most prestigious and well known museums in Rome, this class has been anything but boring. Not only has this class been educational in an academic sense, but it has also taken me to many museums that I would not have thought to go to on my own. Even if I accomplish nothing in the way of exploring Rome in a week, I always get at least one trip to a museum to cross off my list!
Last week and midterms was one of the most frustrating experiences I have had in Rome. It seemed like they were so much harder than midterms back home, but that’s because academics seem like much less of a priority here. Even though Rome is amazing, and Fridays off are pretty much the best thing ever, I am taking some of the most interesting classes I ever have here in subjects that I never considered before. Studying abroad has been such an amazing experience for me, both academically and personally.