Cornell in Rome

Before now, I had never been to Florence, much less Italy. My first time in Florence definitely provoked something called the Stendhal Syndrome. Architecture professor Medina Lasansky  explained that when tourists would visit Florence, they would frequently become so overwhelmed with the beauty of the city that they would have heart palpitations and faint. The reaction was named after the 19th century writer Stendhal and gave a lot of business to the hospitals around Florence.

Before reaching Florence we stopped at our first destination on the outskirts of the city. The group visited the Charterhouse, which originally served as a monastery for the Carthusians, a religious order of the Roman Catholic Church. The building was established in 1341 and was composed of individual “cells” for where the hermit monks would live, meditate and take their meals. They were allowed one hour weekly for recreation; this was the only time they were permitted to talk. In 1958, the Charterhouse was taken over by the Cistercian order, a much more liberal group that permitted talking, which was why we were able to receive a tour of the place at all.

The Facade of the Charterhouse

Stan Taft, our art professor for the semester, pointed out the unique use of color in the frescoes located there. The pieces were extraordinarily modern in nature and vividly bright.

The colors used to form the folds of the cloth are made up of complementary hues rather than shades of the same color.

When we hopped back on the bus we discovered that an architecture student had been locked into one of the rooms of the Charterhouse! He had been sketching and hadn’t realized that the group had departed. The friar let him out and he got a cab to the hotel and met up with us. We all quickly learned the importance of staying with the group on trips like this one. It’s a bit scary to be lost in Italy!

We arrived at the hotel, dropped our bags, and ran off for lunch and a trip to the top of the Duomo. This was the beginning of my Stendhal Syndrome/claustrophobia. Florence’s Duomo is the central cathedral of the city. Its dome is the primary feature of the Florentine landscape and its apex boasts 360-degree panoramic views.

The images on the inside of the Duomo

Getting to the top didn’t go that well for me; we climbed hundreds of steps, floor after floor of spiral staircases and walked down thin hallways. My legs were shaking and my hands were sweating. When we reached the internal walkway around the ceiling of the dome, a sign encouraged us to continue on.

A sign urging us on!

A view from one of the small portholes in the side of the dome.

It had seemed like the end was near, but we had around five more stories to go! When my head finally poked out of the ceiling of the dome at the top, I had never felt so liberated. The view was breathtaking and I had a strong sense of vertigo combined with amazement. To calm my nerves I sketched, took some photographs, a few deep breaths and bathed in the sunshine. Then Erica and I scurried down and found ourselves shaking and feeling quite faint. A trip to a local bar and some acqua minerale did the trick and we were off and running again to the Uffizi Gallery.

The view from the top!

A little disheveled at the top.

The Uffizi was like nothing I’ve ever seen. Iconic art covered every wall. Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” literally brought tears to my eyes when I saw it. The painting is even more beautiful in person. After wandering the halls, we headed back to the hotel and took a much-needed nap, which fortified us for one of the best meals of our lives at Za-Za, a restaurant that was pretty close by.

The following day began early at 9am. We ate breakfast and broke off into our groups, the Planners and Architects going with Jeffrey Blanchard and the Artists with Stan to the Museo Zoologico. We went down the winding narrow streets and crossed the famous Ponte Vecchio or “Old Bridge”, which has little shops mushrooming off the sides of it. (Picture)

During our walk, we stopped by a church but weren’t able to visit because it was Sunday and a service was going on. Our group made its way to the Museo, where we saw a lot of sea life on display. While strolling through the rooms we encountered every form of taxidermy that one could imagine: birds of paradise, tortoises from the Galapagos, whales, big cats, a zebra, and a few scaly armadillos. Eventually we stumbled upon items of human inspiration; a series of anatomical wax models displayed in glass cases. They were quite grotesque and all of a sudden the Stendhal effect flooded back. After I sketched a blood vessel system and an overly enlarged brain I decided that I wasn’t able to handle my sense of amazement for much longer and went out and took a walk during which I found a camera store and re-purchased my Nikon that had been stolen (fortunately fully covered by insurance).

After the excursion and some lunch we made our way over to the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum. Ferragamo was a revolutionary shoe-maker and designer who invented the cork-wedge and the use of raffia and other plant fibers in the construction of shoes. He took anatomy classes and invented an arch support method that takes pressure off of the ball of the foot and makes his heels incredibly comfortable to wear. Ferragamo’s inventiveness arose from an embargo placed on Italy under Mussolini’s fascist regime.

-GJ

Ferragamo's Red Shoe

Erica and Giffin look at a display of some of Ferragamo's most famous shoes.

After studying Spanish for over 8 years (including 4 semesters at Cornell) I arrived in Rome a week before the intensive Italian class, and began to speak a strange hybrid of Spanish and Italian during my failed attempts to communicate. I added “s”s to plurals, kept saying “hola” instead of “buon giorno” or the ever universal “ciao,” and kept inserting Spanish vocabulary into badly formed sentences.
That first week was a blur of sorts. I was jetlagged and Erica dubbed me “Ginny: My Roommate the Bat” because of my bizarre sleeping habits. We found the local grocery stores “Punto” and “Despar” and discovered that prosciutto and cheese are unbelievable and that wine costs about as much as water. We ate at some more terrible restaurants because we kept falling into the tourist traps that we were had been warned about.
I was completely lost most of the time due to Rome’s patchwork city plan and my complete lack of a sense of direction. A group of us made a few trips wandering around the city, stumbling onto the Victor Emmanuel II monument and Richard Meier’s Ara Pacis Museum. The weekends were fun; I spent them roaming around the city, eating meals with new friends and learning a bit more about the eternal city.
Erica and I even stumbled upon the Pantheon and debated whether or not it actually was the pantheon because it simply emerges out of framework of Rome’s residential buildings.

In front of Richard Meier's Controversial Ara Pacis Museum

Finally, Italian class began and immediately we started to learn how the language worked; I found it similar to Spanish in a lot of ways. By day three I felt like I was on a roll! By day four I found myself confined to my bed with a 104 degree fever, sick as a dog. I learned that an epidemia had overtaken the city and the symptoms were high fever and a cough, of which I had both. Much to my luck I also developed a sinus infection, which was treated after a very easy visit to the doctor upon the aid of Anna Rita and Anne Marie.
I spent days and days in bed. When I saw my roommates going outside into Rome I was incredibly jealous but asleep most of the time so I only noticed the jealousy in small feverish bursts. I finally emerged five days later and made it through the remainder of my intensive Italian class. I continued to have a weird sleep schedule, but it was a relief to feel human again.
Post-sickness I was incredibly overwhelmed when I stepped back onto the cobblestone streets of the Centro Storico. I forgot all directions, my Italian was spotty at best and I was still in quite a daze. I relied on my city-planner roommates Taylor and Lindsey to guide me to Campo di Fiori, Piazza Navona and to Via del Corso for shopping, coffee and other touristy indulgences the first days back.

I couldn’t wait for class to start, when it finally did, I got right back into the swing of things and my navigation, Italian and overall competence as a temporary Roman greatly improved.

GJ