Rome History | Select Study Abroad Florence

Photo of the Week: Vatican from Castel Sant’Angelo

We have been loving all the new Pope business in Rome. I love the little tidbits we catch about Pope Francis I and his choices in these pivotal first days of his Pontificate. For example, his choice to have a more modest fisherman’s ring (plated in gold rather than made 100% of the expensive metal) and cross necklace (his is made of lead). My favorite snippet was that after being elected, Francesco, though he had the right to stay in his new home at the Vatican, declined and chose to return to his hotel room with the other Cardinals. All three choices express his extreme humbleness. I mean, I think it would have been hard for me to give up my first night’s stay in the Vatican apartments. And that got me thinking about other premises over which new Popes once gained ownership upon their election, namely, the Castel Sant’Angelo.
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Technorati Tags: Castel Sant'Angelo, Italy, Pope, Rome, Rome History, Vatican

Things I Didn’t Know, Art History Edition: The Colossus

This blog series is an excuse to keep track of all the random tidbits we uncover in our day-to-day life as students, guides, teachers, and just generally interested and curious people. I know it is not everyone’s prerogative to find out exactly how renaissance babies were swaddled, what 16th century widows wore, or what famous members of the Medici family did with their free time, just to better understand a work of art. So I will spare you our endless Early Modern machinations and just give you the good stuff.

The Colossus (of Rome, Rhodes, and New York):
We’re heading down to Rome tomorrow for a whirlwind tour of the sites and doing some requisite brushing up on our notes. While discussing the Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colosseum, and the origins of this now ubiquitous nickname, I realized there were some holes in my knowledge that needed plugging up. One question lead to the next and suddenly I had gone from a colossus in Rome to images of a lost colossus in Rhodes, back home to New York to a colossus I too often forget.
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Technorati Tags: Art History, Colosseum, Rome & Pompeii, Rome History