The art of travel, Italian style
by Andrew Seguin
 Our senses precede reason in most matters, learning included. At least that’s the impression one gets from the blog written by the eight Upper School students who traveled to Italy over spring break.
“We dropped off our bags in a room and headed out for some Italian breakfast,” a student wrote on day one, after getting off the plane at 7 a.m. “We had paste and cappucini, which were very yummy! Then we went to Santa Maria Maggiore, a very beautiful basilica. Then we had a lunch of pizza at La Strega, near Via Nazionale and the basilica.”
Though each blog entry from the eight-day journey ends with a listing of the best pizza, coffee and gelato consumed that day, it would be wrong to think that the trip was a sentence of feasts punctuated with architecture. All the student travelers are Latin and Greek students, and they were accompanied by classics teacher Christopher Barnes and math teacher Harmony Skillman. Their purpose was to gain a greater understanding of classical art and architecture by seeing it in person.
“I myself got interested in things Roman through falling in love with Italy,” Dr. Barnes said. “Many of the girls didn’t need that step, but there is simply no way of connecting with the past like walking inside the Pantheon, or seeing the art collections of the Vatican, the Capitoline Museums or the Villa Giulia.”
Each student was assigned to provide the blog entry for one day during the trip, but that was just one way they engaged with their travels. “Each girl had to choose a prominent piece of architecture or work of art to research and present to the group as our on-site guide,” Dr. Barnes said. “I chose a variety of historical periods and types of art to give the group a collective knowledge that would enable the girls to help one another understand what they were seeing.”
The group visited the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel, the aforementioned Capitoline Museums and Villa Giulia National Museum, the Forum, the Colosseum and a host of other sites around Rome. They also traveled to the ancient ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii — where they saw how Romans truly lived — and then to Naples, where they visited the National Archaeological Museum. Quite an itinerary for the first Classics trip in Chapin’s history.
“Just the sheer variety of topics that arise from walking around certain areas of Rome, from engineering and geology to history and literature, provide stimulation for every intellectual taste,” Dr. Barnes said. “It is unparalleled exercise for the imagination, and a chance to talk about things that Latin and Greek class often do not allow.”
If you’d like to read more about the trip, click here to see the blog. It will remain live permanently as a Chapin resource for travelers to Italy.
Click here to see a photo gallery of the trip.
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