Thursday, May 13, 2010

This morning was our first carto walk. We had to meet on "the island", which apparently there's only one island in the Tiber around Rome so that's what all the locals call it. When at the church on the island at 8:30 and then headed out for our four hour walk. Our first walk was the Via Aurelia Vetus, a road from ancient Rome. We started across the river at the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge, another local name) in Trastevere. The class split up into two groups, one half had Zach and my half had Anne. We had to document our path so that over the weekend we could make a route map. They never really told us what a route map is, just that we had to figure it out, so I wasn't really sure what to document. We saw some medieval buildings, then came to a couple piazzas, the first of which had a church that was dedicated to Sant'Agata, a saint whose boobs were chopped off after turning down some governor, so the capitals of this church have her boobs in them :D hahaha. I love when architects have a sense of humor. The next piazza was Piazza di Santa Maria in Trastevere where we stopped for a break.

We headed up the Janiculum hill which was quite a hike. On the way to the top we took a little detour to the spanish embassy which confused me a bit, but when we walked around the back and walked into the courtyard I saw it. Bramante's Tempietto. The most perfect temple ever designed and the best example of High Renaissance Architecture. The Tempietto, or little temple, was built on the site of the supposed martyrdom of St. Peter. I took so many pictures, and actually got to see down into the bottom of the temple where he was supposedly crucified.

I could have spent all day there sketching but we had to go. We made it up to the top of the hill and finished our walk. From the top of the hill we could see all of Rome and I got some of the most amazing pictures ever.

Right at noon a canon went of to mark the time of day, and then we were free to go. We had to walk all the way from there back to studio for Boothby's class. After that we had studio and then a presentation by Jamie about Hadrian's Villa, where we're going tomorrow for our field trip.