The Capitoline Museum and BBQ

Wed - February 22, 2006

Today we set out at 10 for the Capitoline Museum. We walked through the Jewish Ghetto and up the stairs past the copy of the statue of Marcus Aurelius on his horse and into the Museum, which was right near Vittorio Emanuele and the Via del Imperiali

We then entered the museums (after many group photos in the courtyard with the massive body parts laying around, of course)

The museum in itself was huge. There was a ton of ancient statuary, including the original bronze statue of Marcus Aurelius, which, as Lisa said, is the only remaining original bronze statue from ancient Rome. All the others had been taken and melted down by the Catholic church. Why not that one? They had thought it was Constantine.

We also saw the remaining original wall of the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (or the temple of Jupiter greatest and best as my old classics professor had translated for me), which the museum was built around.




We continued to wander through the museum, which turned from ancient specimen to early Christian art, then some Renaissance, then Baroque pieces, as well as many things I couldn't identify. There were paintings, tapestries, assortments of china, vases, the list goes on...

And we got to see a Caravaggio! (although the other had sadly been moved)

Then, to our great pleasure, we came upon a few rooms of busts, all lined up. We had a lot of fun with those. After looking at them and studying them intently like the good honors students we are, we all picked our favorite ones and posed next to them, often making funny faces. This kept us entertained for a while. When we moved on, we saw a few more statues, then headed down the giftshop to spend money.









We had a long break, where good food was eaten, work was done, and preparations were made for the group bbq!

We all met at 7:30 in Lisa's apartment bringing with us various tasty food items. Each of the apartments had been assigned food to bring. It was all delicious and the bbq was a success, as usual. We all ended the day feeling very satisfied, if not from the activities, then at least from the amazing food, which ranged from chicken and sausage, to whole pineapples and grilled vegetables, to a huge dessert platter consisting of pears and different varieties of chocolate and chocolate truffles, and a coconut cream torte surrounded by double chocolate chip cookies (that was made by me...very proud of that one). Yum!





Shayla