Into the Movies and Back to the Past

This past weekend we stayed within Italy. On Friday, for our Italian Studies class, we went to Cinécittà, Rome's equivalent to Hollywood. It took us about an hour by metro to get there as its basically on the outskirts of Rome. When we got there, we had a short tour of the current sets they had and are using. The first set we saw were the sets of Gangs of New York, the American movie with Leonardo DiCaprio. We weren't supposed to take pictures of them since they're using them for another film that has yet to be released, but I did anyway (mainly because they told me I couldn't). We also saw the sets that were used for a documentary on Rome and for the movie, Cleopatra. We went inside an exhibition that went through how some of the films were made and displayed props and costumes from famous American and Italian films that were made right in Cinécittà. I didn't realize that quite a few American movies were filmed mostly in Cinécittà, including Gangs of New York and Nine. It was an interesting place to see, though I wish we had been allowed to see more of it. I think all of the most interesting sets are hidden away from tourists and ordinary people.

One of the residential streets in Pompeii

Most of the past weekend and week have been spent doing studio, our own individual projects and our collective site model. We did have a field trip to Pompeii and Paestum this weekend for all Pantheon Institute students. On Saturday morning, at 7:45am all CIS and Penn State Architecture and Landscape Architecture students were on a bus to Pompeii. Of course I didn't end up waking up until 7:30, so I ended up throwing half my stuff into my backpack and running out the door. It's a great way to start the day. It took us about three hours to get there, and there really isn't much between here and Pompeii. Once we got there, it was actually better and a lot cooler than I was expecting. We've already seen Ostia Antica and Hadrian's Villa, which are essentially just ruins, and we've all grown a bit tired of them. Pompeii was partially preserved under volcanic rock, so there was more that was still standing. We walked along the residential areas where most of the impluviums were still there, though there was no longer water in them. There were grape vines growing in several areas, including a still-stnaidng vineyard that had grapes growing to simulate what it would have looked like when Pompeii was a functioning town.

Ancient Vineyard

We saw the amphitheater, which I'm fairly sure couldn't keep lions from attacking the people, nor was I convinced that it could hold 80,000 people. I suppose I wouldn't know, though. Maybe people back then were a lot smaller.
We also saw the House of the Fawn. We basically had to, given how much we've learned about it thanks to Jamie Cooper. We saw the view corridor, and a lot of it was still existing. We also saw a German shepherd there that was just lying there. Apparently Pompeii welcomes dogs, and there were dogs laying around everywhere. It was refreshing, and if I could, I'd consider adopting one. They're all so cute.
The one thing that was probably the coolest, yet also most disturbing, was seeing some of the bodies that are still encased and preserved in volcanic ash from Vesuvius. We saw two in glass cases in one of the rooms in the main Forum area. They were cool, but parts of their bones were still preserved, and most of the positions they were frozen in were mainly positions of pain and suffering. Most were holding their noses or crouching. It was really kinda sad. They apparently used to be everywhere in Pompeii, but they've since removed them to museums to preserve them. I think it would be interesting to see the original positions of all of the bodies, but at the same time, I think it might be depressing.

We stayed in Pompeii for about three hours, and then we had to head to Paestum, which is about an hour south of Pompeii. We were staying overnight and having dinner there before exploring the archeological sites on Sunday. I've honestly never even heard of Paestum until we had this field trip, and it's not a very large town. It's a coastal town, and its main attractions are resorts, amusement parks, and summer activities. Basically, the town was pretty dead as its now the end of October. We stayed in a hotel called Hotel Sogaris, which looked a lot nicer on the website than it did in person. It wasn't a bad place, but the pool was full of leaves and it didn't look nearly as extravagant. It was right on the beach though, so we did get to see the sunset on the beach. It was nice, though it was a bit cold to be swimming.

Paestum beach at sunset

We all had dinner together at the Hotel Calypso restaurant, including the director and his wife. It was a bit far from our hotel, not to mention some of the streets seemed pretty sketchy. We had a reserved section of tables. Cait, Justin, Clarissa, and Kyle were at my table. The food at the hotel was amazing. We had four courses, including dessert. The menu consisted of a small piece of pizza, pepper fritters, a potato pasta, pork with roasted potatoes, and a mint cannoli. The meal was probably pretty expensive, but it was included in our fees for studying abroad. We also had some wine with dinner and exchanged childhood horror stories. We met "Jyle," Kyle's apparent childhood altar ego. Later that night, basically everyone decided to bring wine from Rome because there wasn't much to do at night in Paestum. A group of us all played cards in Simon's room accompanied by several bottles of wine. It was a good night.

Early on Sunday, we headed to the archeological site of Paestum. There were two main temples, the Temple of Neptune and the Temple of Athena, whereas most of the other areas were small ruins. There was a small amphitheater, which was mainly just low stone rings in the ground. The temples were pretty magnificent though. They were mostly intact, especially the Temple of Neptune. The columns were so thick, and the temples were so tall. I can't imagine just going there to pray and having that be part of everyday life. The ruins there were really kind of beautiful. The weather was also perfect and the sky and mountains were quite the backdrop. We also went to the museum in Paestum as well. I don't really like museums much, but it was interesting seeing some of the frescos and pottery. They had some very pretty handcrafted jewelry on display in there as well. We left Paestum by mid afternoon, and were back in Rome by evening.

Despite our increasing studio course load, I'm glad they took us to Pompeii and Paestum. Up until this point, I was disliking most ruins we have seen as I couldn't really get much out of them. The history of Pompeii and Paestum was much easier to see, and I think that's why I enjoyed seeing it. The mountain scapes in southern Italy are also quite something to behold, and you don't see that in a dense city like Rome.

This week should be consumed mostly by studio work, as we have our midterm reviews on Friday... for probably about seven hours. No joke. Our studio project is interesting, but I've never lacked motivation so much in my college career. Rome (and my computer... and now Doctor Who) are really quite distracting. I'll pull through somehow. I am really starting to enjoy our cartography class though. We'll be walking the papal route (or at least most of it) on Thursday, and I think that's a really interesting thing to see. Our professor is one of those people who just seems to know everything, and he's pretty enjoyable to listen to, even at 9 in the morning.
That's all for now. Plans for Dublin and Paris are now official, and a trip to Switzerland and possibly Austria may happen as well. This upcoming weekend will probably be spent here in Rome, though. All should be great experiences. Ciao for now, as I really should be designing a building right now.