Rome via Brooklyn

357 words, 2 minutes

Many things we saw today were massive in scale. Of course, there were the iconic colossus fragments of Constantine (the breadth of its full stature we felt through its reconstruction), but the Capitoline hill and the complexes that reside upon it are colossal as well. The journey to the destination was a trek in of itself and so was traversing throughout the area due to enormous size. Dionysius discusses how the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus was built over various lifetimes, with each iteration never living to see its completion. These two different effects of the vastness of these complexes communicate a sort of piety- the dedication required to make a pilgrimage to these temples and to devote your lives into constructing a place of worship.

On the other hand, we saw several artifacts that were either life-sized or even small enough to be held in your hands. The life-sized statues are interestingly dual nature- large in the eyes of a human and small compared to the size of the temple it would’ve been housed in. There were also smaller figurines of deities, characters of mythic proportions condensed to a miniature size. Such a phenomenon, in my opinion, stems from a desire to have an object of devotion that is portable and intimate. An artifact is imbued with the essence of its representation and in this instance, the magnitude is communicated onto this small object.

I had a lot of fun following Professor Yarrow through the Capitoline Museum and listening to her various insights into each exhibit we stopped to look at, as well as follow up questions anyone has. It was nice to leave the navigation to an expert. When we were allowed to explore on our own, I found that it was a lot harder to find areas I haven’t gone before and it was definitely more interesting to hear it from an expert. The museums make me nostalgic for the many, many times I’ve visited a museum in NYC, seeing all the glass displays and plaques. The Capitoline Museum, however, is much more extravagant in architecture and presentation- every inch of it was history.