Cultural Trip to Italy

We began our week in Italy with a fascinating visit to the Colosseum whose history was every bit as violent as depicted in the film Gladiator. Slaves, criminals and gladiators were murdered and executed there in a variety of very gruesome and imaginative ways to entertain a blood-thirsty Roman audience. Underneath the arena lies a series of tunnels and pulleys so that the wild animals, which were used to attack gladiators, could appear as if from nowhere, from under the floor. Sometimes it was turned into a miniature lake for the gladiators; other times they pitched dwarves against women or simply fed criminals, whose feet had been dipped in honey, to bears. We saw original swords and equipment and learnt how politicians paid for the games to become popular.

The second day we spent in the Vatican, the home of the Catholic church. The sheer size and scale of the works of art were extraordinary and utterly overwhelming. The ceiling had been frescoed throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Michelangelo, Raphael, Bernini, and Sandro Botticelli with Michelangelo covering 1,100 square metres of it in four years. St. Peter's Basilica was also extraordinary and has the largest interior of any Christian church in the world, holding 60,000 people. It is regarded as one of the holiest Christian sites and considered to be the burial site of Peter, who was one of the twelve apostles.

The last leg of the journey involved going to Pompeii where a whole Roman city is preserved. You can see original frescoes on the wall, grooves where the chariots dug into the road and whole streets that are still intact. You can also see where the bodies lay when they were killed by the explosion, something that seemed pretty close to the fore of our minds when the volcano in Iceland erupted two weeks later.

Some of the students managed to wake themselves for a 3 am start on Good Friday to watch a Catholic march-past of hundreds of people dressed in long cloaks and pointed hats, representing sins, in sombre silence to remember the events of Jesus’s crucifixion.

The sun shone dutifully, the pizzas were wonderful and all of us enjoyed what was undoubtedly a wonderful and fascinating trip for all.