Ιστορία της Αθήνας

What do you first think of when you think of Florence? The Renaissance, with artists such as Michaelangelo, Da Vinci, Raphael, and others? Soaring Roman Catholic cathedrals? A center of culture and fashion and food? Fantastic art museums and works like the David?

... how about dinosaurs?

In Florence, along with museums like the Uffizi and the Accademica Gallery, there is a small complex of museums that make up the Museo di Storia Naturale di Firenze (Florence Museum of Natural History). One of these is the Museo di Geologia e Paleontologia, a fairly out of the way little building behind the S.S. Annunzoila. It's not well advertised... if we hadn't done a lot of research into where exactly we wanted to go prior to traveling to Italy, I don't think we would have known it exists at all. However, we did, and I was curious to see how Italy does paleontology, and so the morning of our last day in Florence, we set out to find the place. Now, the previous day, trying to visit the art galleries, we'd frequently gotten hopelessly lost, so our first stop was at an internet cafe to ask Google Maps to plot our course for us. This, however, completely failed. The street signs are often absent or are out of date in the city, and so, after wandering around confusedly for a while, we stopped into an archaeological museum on the Piazza di Annunzoila for directions. We found one large sign for the temporary exhibit currently in the museum, but still managed to walk past it several times before noticing the entrance.

Once there, though, the visit was entirely worth it. The temporary exhibit, "Dinosauri in Carne e Ossa" ("Dinosaurs in the Flesh") began in the Botanical Gardens, with life-sized reconstructions of various prehistoric creatures. These weren't small, Velociraptor-sized creatures either (for context, real Velociraptors are only about 6 feet long and 1-2 feet tall); the models included giants such as Spinosaurus aegyptaicus, Diplodocus longus, and Tyrannosaurus rex.

Diplodocus longus and I Image credit to Sarah G.

As much as the dinosaurs themselves were cool, though, the part I found more interesting, from what I could read of it with my limited knowledge of Italian, was the information about the artists themselves. The prehistoric creatures were from all over the world; all the paleoartists and sculptors were from Italy. Prior to this, I'd seen very little recent scientific art done by anyone outside the U.S., England, and Germany. It was very interesting to compare the pieces on display to the ones made at the paleo lab I work at back in Chicago. Some of the detail was less refined; the scales looked fairly manufactured, and none of the dinosaurs had flaws, scars, or strings of drool hanging out of their mouths, which are features I've come to expect out of a truly life-like model. However, there was a sense of tension and movement in a couple these pieces that I don't often see back in the states. It was rather reminiscent of some of the Classical or Renaissance statues I'd seen the day before, actually. Except, of course, that instead of human figures, these were prehistoric creatures, and they were made of special plastics instead of stone.

Spinosaurus eating MawsoniaImage mine

The exhibit continued inside the museum, with more models as well as a decent collection of Cenozoic fossils, including multiple mammoths, several bears, and a set of large extinct flightless birds from New Zealand. They also had a whole walk through time of invertebrate shells, showing how the diversity had changed since calcification first appeared in the Cambrian period, over 500 million years ago. They even had a token case full of plant fossils, mostly leaves and bark. For all that the museum was small, in need of some updating, and rather hard to find, it was really well set up, and had a wonderful collection.

Since I've been in Greece and Italy, I've been surprised by how little hard science seems to be evident. There's a lot of archaeology, but not much else. Perhaps it's here, and I just don't know where to look; perhaps in America, I'm so ingrained into that subculture that I see it everywhere, and it's not as prominent as I think it is. But I'm used to there being major natural history and science museums in every large city, that are well advertised and key places to visit. That doesn't seem to be as true here. So it was a nice surprise to find even a small natural history museum in Italy, to learn about the geology and paleontology of the area, and discover how that interacts with field in the rest of the world.

Alright, I have time to write again, now that I'm on my way to the airport hotel, where I'm staying (and probably posting this from) tonight before leaving tomorrow morning to return to Athens. But, to continue my story where I left off...

After a quick lunch at the Capitole Museum cafe, we headed off towards the Forum, for the second half of our visit. As we entered, we left the modern age and entered the remains of one 2000 years old.

The Roman Forum is in some respects analogous to the Greek Agora (which, I realize I haven't written about yet... But I have visited it, and as I catch up on the backlog, I'll discuss it further). It was the center for both secular and religious life in the ancient city. However, the Greek agora, in it's ideal form, us a primarily open meeting space; the Forum was anything but. There were numerous triumphal arches, public buildings, temples, memorials, and other ruins. One of the most impressive of these was the Senate House, which is now preserved as a museum. Unlike in most popular media, this was not an open semicircular theatre. Instead, it was a roofed rectangular building. When the senate would vote in antiquity, individuals would move to one side or the other, to signify a yes or no vote. The number of senators on each side would be counted to determine the outcome. The building itself is really beautiful. As Ilaria explained, and as was still visible in places, the walls would have been covered in frescos, and the floor with colorful marble. The objects stored in the building had little to do with it, but were also really interesting. Much of it was glasswork, including a really cool miniature portrait, made of fine plated gold placed between two pieces of glass. There were also many perfume bottles, cosmetic jars, and other little storage containers. Most of them were quite intact, which was really neat to see.

The next major building we saw was, in my opinion, the prettiest. This was the House of the Vestal Virgins. As luck would have it, we came right as the roses in the middle of the house were blooming. It helped restore some of the glory to this home I'd one of the must important people in Rome. The Vestal Virgins were in charge of keeping the sacred light that Aeneas brought from Troy when he went to found Italy. They were also in charge of keeping many state secrets. These priestesses were trained from age 6 or 7, and their post lasted until they were 30. Aster two and a half decades in a position of power, however, most found leaving the house to become a wife and mother to be both challenging and unrewarding, and so they remained in the house. The must famous of these priestesses were honored with status around the vineyard of the two-story building.This was a place where some of the most important women in classical civilization lived, and so definitely one of my favorite places to visit.

There was a ton more in the Forum to see, and that we did see, but I'm going to skim over that and move on to Palatine Hill. This was the site of the emperor's palace, a little away from the Forum, and overlooking it. This was in some ways a subtle cue of power dynamics, first instituted by Augustus. As the years went on, and emperors went on, new palaces were built, until the rule of Domitian. His palace was so huge, and so beautiful, with brand new styles of architecture, that most emperors after him choose to live there. It was the first example of "gothic" like building styles, with flowing curves instead of harsh angles. In many rooms, there was an apse for the emperor's seat, mimicing a statue niche and giving the emperor a status of power and a resemblance to the gods. We spent a lot of time wandering through here as well, looking at the various fountains, rooms, and marble floors.

The next visit was to one of the largest Roman bath houses, the Caracalla baths. These functioned more as a sort of rec center/spa/social hall than as simply a place to go wash up. The rooms were magnificently tiled, and the ceilings would have vaulted up over 40 ft when intact. It is still magnificent today, in it's ruined state; I can only imagine how impressive this complex was when it was in use.

Our final stop was at the Colosseum, the iconic image of ancient Rome (as the Parthenon is for ancient Greece). This, too, was an extremely impressive feat of engineering. And, according to Ilaria, it's function was more as a circus or theatre than as a bloody tournament ring. Wild animals, particularly big cats, were expensive, so it would have been impractical to let then get killed every single gladiator battle. And the gladiators themselves were more like sports stars; no one wanted their favorite to get killed. So, once again, the media got it wrong. Still, though, the site would have held impressive spectacles, especially of you were one of 50,000 packed it to watch. It really is one of the most unique buildings we saw during the tour, and the perfect place to end the day. It was time to get dinner and go home after our quick overview walk through the city of Rome.

It has been a whirlwind couple of days, and this is the first time I've had a chance to sit down and digest everything that's happened. (Well, almost. I had time on the train to Florence as well, but I had some technical difficulties and ended up just listening to podcasts instead. But this is irrelevant, and I'll return to my narrative now).

Tuesday started pretty early, though not as bad as the day before. It was also a nice slow start: the Piazza di Spanga View, our hotel, provided a delicious in-room breakfast, which we sat and ate while enjoying our magnificent overlook of the Spanish Steps (due to more technical difficulties, no picture right now, but I'll put one up once I get back to Athens and a proper computer). Then, we went to meet Ilaria Marsili (www.ilariamarsilirometours.com). S's parents had met her before, on a previous trip to Rome, and so set it up. And thus began the quickfire trip through the city of Rome.

In the morning, we primarily looked at things around the modern city, that you can find just by wandering around. Ilaria pointed out some of her favorite architecture on churches and secular buildings, much of it by the artist Barberini. He was one of the first to produce a sense of movement in a building, using alternating concave and convex facades, and intricate floral and insect patterns. It was secondly some of the prettiest design I've seen abroad thus far: In Greece, all the buildings are either really new, or ancient ruins. There aren't very many Neoclassical or Art Deco type buildings, and no gothic or renaissance style stuff. Rome, on the other hand, is a jumble of architecture from antiquity to postmodernism. It was really quite neat to see, especially with a guide. There were several occasions where she pulled us into hidden corners, such as a monastery courtyard or the alcove of a palace, filled with statuary pillaged from Greece.

Another one of these secret places in the city ended up being one of the coolest of the entire tour. Below the medieval church of St. Nicholas in Prison are the remains of not one, but three Roman temples, all built around the first century B.C.E., although there is evidence suggesting they were founded over a century prior to that. Today, some of the remaining columns are built into the church walls, which is by itself is quite interesting. The really cool part, though, is underneath the church. In the past few years, the temple foundations have been excavated. It is possible to walk around the bases at the street level from 120 C.E., seeing the bottoms of the columns and the shops that existed below the podium of the central temple (to Juno Sospita). In places, where the water hasn't caused too much erosion, you can still see the carved detail in the travertine limestone blocks. They also still have some of the pottery fragments discovered during excavation, and pictures of some of the the more complete artifacts, which are now in a museum. This was not just a new site for S. and I; Ilaria had not been there before either, and was at least as excited as we were. It was a lot of fun to see, and a fascinating example of the continuity of purpose, even as the culture and religion change.

The other really interesting big thing we saw was the Pantheon, another ancient site-turned-Catholic church. The present iteration of it was built by the emperor Hadrian, but it was originally founded by Augustus and his friend, Marcus Agrippus. The building is constructed of a double wall with concrete in the center. Near the bottom, this concrete was made with heavy basalt; at the very top, pumice was used, because its so light. This was common practice in most large Roman buildings, but was particularly important for the Pantheon, as the building is domed. In the center of this dome is a massive 27 ft in diameter hole, which allowed light and air to get into the building, and also helped keep the roof from collapsing. Even from the outside, it's an extremely impressive structure. Inside, it's even better. While many things have changed, such as the added apse for the Christian alter, and the fact the statues of saints, the Madonna, and Christ now fill the 12 niches in the walls instead of statues of the 12 major Roman gods, much has been preserved. On the ceiling, the square patterning of the domed ceiling remains; on the floor, the colored marble tile work is still intact as well. Even though it now serves as a church, it is easy to imagine how it might have functioned as the major Roman sanctuary.

After the Pantheon and the Church of St. Nicholas, we moved on towards Capitol Hill and lunch, as it was around 12:30. We still had a whole lot more to see, though. But you'll have to wait, as this post is already far too long, and it's time for me to go to bed, before my second day in Florence. Ciao!