grand tour of italy jennifer anderson | 2016
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foreword
This is a collection of film photographs taken during a trip to Italy on March 12th-20th, 2016. The places visited were Rome, Pompeii, and Florence, and the places within those would be a seemingly unending list, so I won’t go through all of them for your sake. All photographs were taken using a Minolta X-700 model, and the film used was Kodak Ultramax 400 speed 35mm. Special thanks to Doctor Candace Weddle and Professor Tim Speaker, without whom this trip would have been a ridiculous amount of boring. Thank you to Ann Themistocleous, for her unflagging support and patience in all things international travel. Thank you to Doctor Linda Nolan, who made the Villa Borghese and the surrounding gardens come alive through her fascinating commentary. No thanks are expressed to our bus driver for the trip to Pompeii, who could have been a nicer guy. Weddle up! Jennifer Anderson
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roma
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pompeii
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firenze
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“[…] young Romulus Will take the leadership, build walls of Mars, And call by his own name his people Romans. For these I set no limits, world or time, But make the gift of empire without end.” -Jupiter, “The Aenid”
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ROMA Rome (/ˈroʊm/ rohm; Italian: Roma [ˈroːma], Latin: Rōma). A city and special comune (named Roma Capitale) in Italy.
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TRASTEVERE
“While Rome entices with its extraordinary monuments, Trastevere, one of its many distinct neighborhoods, captures the traveler’s heart. Trastevere, which translates literally to “across the Tiber,” was once considered the outskirts of Rome. Allowed to develop its own flavor and now part of il centro storico, it’s the perfect place to glimpse a bit of the old world while still enjoying the lifestyle of today’s Romans. Often described as Bohemian, homes bedecked with flower boxes and clinging ivy intertwine with coffee bars, restaurants, and one-of-a-kind boutiques. Buildings in terracotta, maize, and wine cast a glow, like a daylong sunset. From the cobblestone streets to the overhanging laundry lines, senses are pleasantly awakened with every step.” -Martha Miller, “Life In Italy”
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G A R D E N S AT T H E V I L L A B O R G H E S E “Outside Porta Pinciana he had a beautiful palace built in one of his Vineyards, or Gardens or Villas, however we wish to call it, in which every delight we might desire or have in this life was to be found. It was entirely adorned with beautiful antique and modern statues, fine paintings, and other precious things, including fountains, fishponds and embellishments...� -Giovanni Baglione
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SAINT PETER’S BASILICA “At first, to be frank, we are disappointed; we have heard so much about its stupendous size that we expect this to strike us all at once. Only gradually does it dawn upon us - as we watch people draw near to this or that monument, strangely they appear to shrink; they are, of course, dwarfed by the scale of everything in the building. This in its turn overwhelms us.” -Georgina Masson
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SANTA MARIA DEL POPOLO
VENITE AD ME OMNES QUI L ABORATIS ET ONERATI ESTIS ET EGO REFICIAM VOS
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“Work? No. Today’s going to be a holiday.” -Joe Bradley, “Roman Holiday”
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“[...] then darkness came on once more and ashes began to fall again, this time in heavy showers. We rose from time to time and shook them off, otherwise we should have been buried and crushed beneath their weight. I could boast that not a groan or cry of fear escaped me in these perils, but I admit that I derived some poor consolation in my mortal lot from the belief that the whole world was dying with me and I with it.� -Pliny the Younger, A.D. 79
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pompeii Pompeii [pɔmˈpɛjjiː] in Latin is a second declension plural (Pompeiī, -ōrum). An ancient Roman town-city destroyed and buried in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79.
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T H E F O RU M
Pompeii’s forum [was the] the political, commercial and social heart of the town. As was typical of the time, most of the most important civic buildings at Pompeii - the municipal offices, the basilica (court-house), the principal temples (such as the Capitolium), and the macellum (market) - were located in or around the forum. [..] in the years immediately before Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii, building work was taking place to improve the appearance of the forum. Wall-paintings in one of the houses excavated illustrate scenes from the forum, such as bustling market-stalls set up in the colonnade fronting many of the forum buildings. Such evidence highlights the importance of this area in the everyday lives of the town’s inhabitants. -Doctor Joanne Berry, BBC
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T H E PA L A E S T R A “The palaestra of the ‘Iuventus Pompeiana’ or the ‘House of the Gladiators’, occupies a vast area and consists of a central space for gymnastic exercises, surrounded by a tall perimeter wall with ten monumental entrance gateways. A room preceded by two columns off the south-west side was probably the space dedicated to the cult of Augustus, patron of the ‘collegia’.” -Pompeii Musei
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HOMES OF POMPEII “There is ample documentation of the Roman house in Pompeii, from modest dwellings to large and magnificent villas with sumptuous decorations, from simple workmen’s houses to the elegant residences of the noble class, from the homes of merchants which were built around their workshops, to those with gardens and plots of land used for agriculture.” -Tiberio Gracco
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T H E QUA D R I P O RT I CO f ort es F ort u n a iu vat
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“But still more imagined that there were no Gods left, and that the universe was plunged into eternal darkness.� -Pliny the Younger, A.D. 79
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“We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence to weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael, and Machiavelli, (I suppose they are buried there too, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and rent their tombs to other parties - such being the fashion in Italy,) and between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno.” -Mark Twain, “Innocents Abroad; Or, The New Pilgrim’s Progress”
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FIRENZE Florence (/ˈflɒrəns/ flor-əns; Italian: Firenze [fiˈrɛntse]. The capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany and of the Metropolitan City of Florence.
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GALLERIA DEGLI UFFIZI
“The “Galleria degli Uffizi” is one of the most famous museums in the world given the rich amount of unique artworks and masterpieces conserved within its walls, the majority from the Renaissance period. The main part of the collections were left by the Medici to the state of Tuscany so that they could “adorn the State, be of utility to the Public and attract the curiosity of Foreigners” Located in the heart of Florence, the Uffizi Gallery hosts works of art by great Italian artists such as Botticelli, Giotto, Cimabue, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Raffaello, just to name a few of the most famous. Its large collection has works from all centuries but a large part dates back to the periods between the 12th and 17th centuries.” -Guide to Uffizi Gallery Museum
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S A N TA M A R I A N O V E L L A “Alberti took his cue from romanesque design. Following his medieval model, he designed a small, psuedo-classical pedimentcapped temple front for the facade’s upper part and supported it with a pilaster framed arcade that incorporates the six tombs and three doorways of the Gothic building. But in the organization of these elements, Alberti applied renaissance principles.� -Fred S. Kleiner
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ACADEMIA GALLERIA “No longer does the figure remain still in a Classical contraposto stance, but rather extends into the surrounding space away from a vertical axis. This movement outward from a central core forces the viewer to take into account both the form and the space between and surrounding the forms—in order to appreciate the complete composition” -Lois Fichner-Rathus
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SA N M I N I AT O A L M O N T E
v o s e s t i s l u x m u n d i n o n p o t e s t c i v i ta s a b s c o n d i s u p r a m o n t e m p o s i ta
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“The Cathedral, [...] if we consider magnitude and materials, boldness and skill, the second and in these respects inferior only to the unrivalled Vatican.� -John Chetwode Eustace
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