The City Dump -- June 22

So yesterday we spent a thrilling morning at the Roman city dump. The ancient one, that is. We climbed Monte Testaccio, which is a hill that is just as tall as the 7 official hills of Rome, but is manmade. It is composed completely of broken amphorae and other pots, covered with a thin layer of dirt and vegetation. Apparently when early Imperial Rome was importing huge amounts of oil for free distribution as a part of its welfare system, they could not find enough reuses for all of the pots it was shipped in (you cannot reuse oil jars because the remnants of the old oil will turn the new oil rancid), so they began breaking them and stacking them up,using whole jugs to form the sides of this massive hill, and over the years it grew to epic proportions. It is an interesting site for archaeologists, of course, and can enable us to trace the trade routes and understand the Roman economy better, since each piece was stamped by the producer (probably of the pot), then later by officials at various checkpoints along the administrative line of the welfare system. We can often tell from the stamps the origin, weight, contents, date of shipment, destination, etc. Plus there was a great view of the city from up there! Not exactly something that will make the Top Ten Sites of Rome handbooks anytime soon, but interesting nonetheless.

We did get quite a bit of the afternoon off, though because let's face it -- there's only so much productive time you can use at a trash dump, and boy does it ever get hot on top of all of that pottery! Taking advantage of our time off, Taco and I visited Nero's Domus Aurea (Golden House), which I mentioned before is under the baths of Trajan. It was a massive dwelling that he built for himself and is an architectural marvel. only small sections of it are open at any given time, and you have to take a guided tour because otherwise people would probably get lost in the maze and wander around until they died of hunger or something. It's not actually THAT big, but the guides have to assume that everyone is stupid, so we had to take the guided tour. IT wasn't bad, except we weren't going to pay for the stupid headphones tour, and the "guide" was not a guide, just a guard that led us around, so we ended up standing for 10 or 15 minutes in whatever rooms the people that made the taped tour thought were interesting, then rushing through the ones we had come to see just because the tourists' little headphones didn't go "bing" while we were in them! I really wish places like that would offer more thorough tours to people that want to know more than what the crazy parties Nero threw were like.

So the format was annoying, but the site was amazing! Thankfully the famous octagonal room was open -- it's in the center of the complex and involves a complex system of windows and a large oculus in the ceiling, so the room itself gets direct sunlight and the rooms around it get filtered ambient light. It's very attractive, even in its centuries-old state. I was able to take pictures and video of quite a bit of it, which will also help in my classes in the future, hopefully. Having only read about and seen plans and drawings of the building previously, I was unprepared for how huge it was, how high the ceilings in all of the rooms were, etc., and am glad to have some images now that convey that fairly well.

AFterwards we went back to the Baths of Diocletian to see the sculpture collection, which was randomly closed when we went last Saturday. First we stopped in the epigraphic collection (big mistake), and by the time we got to the entrance of the sculpture collection it was once again randomly closed. That's Italy for you I suppose. The bath buildings themselves are still very interesting, although this was the third time I had seen them this trip so I wasn't overly enthusiastic. The only new element we saw that I had not been through before was the Michelangelo Cloister, the cloister of the church that is built into the baths, for which we have preparatory design drawings by Michelangelo. It's very pretty, and has bizarre animal-head statuary "growing" out of some of the bushes.

In the afternoon we had a lecture on pottery by Archer Martin, the archaeological director of the Academy. Not much new info for me, having had a fairly extensive Greek Vase Painting course, which included a section on the making of the vessels, but he is a good contact to have, so we all were glad to become acquainted with him.

Nothing went on in the evening really, we were all so tired (I think that will be the theme of the rest of the trip more or less), but I did have one interesting experience. taco and I went to get a gelatto (fancy Italian word for ice cream) at a famous gelatto place down the street from our Villa. If you buy a large enough cone, they dip it in chocolate for you and top it with whipped cream, so of course I had to go for that! Three scoops of gelatto, chocolate, whipped cream, nuts...it was just an accident waiting to happen. I ate it as fast as I could, but of course it was disintigrating the entire time and I ended up sitting on the curb with ice cream on my face, hands, feet, hair, pretty much everything within range. (Don't worry, Taco stole my camera and took pictures). It was embarassing enough as it was, but in the middle of it this beautiful Italian woman comes walking out of the shop with exactly the same cone, curly blonde hair, perfect manicure, high heels, expensive sunglasses, etc. etc. and proceeds to eat the entire thing, WHILE TALKING ON A CELL PHONE without creating so much as a drip! So there I am crouched on the curb like a scene from some National Geographic special about an indian tribe who had never been exposed to civilization and is suddenly given an ice cream, and meanwhile she is standing beside me like the Barbie that comes with a plastic ice cream cone as an accessory. Taco kept saying "see, that's how you're supposed to do it." I think Italians must be born with the gelatto-eating gene or something. But boy was that ice cream cone good!

Today will hopefully be an easy day in terms of our group meetings, and I hope to get some more sightseeing done. We're running out of time here in Rome, and there's so much I haven't made it to yet! Hope everyone is well and I will hear from you guys soon.

Ciao,
Candace