Rome via Brooklyn

Word count: 518

Friday was a perfect day. It ticked all my boxes – the medieval, the ancient, the art, the animals.

After we arrived in Ceveteri, we took a bus up to the medieval city center, which was so beautiful. I loved the clock tower and the rough brick walls, and the demonstration given by Roberto was incredible. I was so amazed at the brushes made from a single animal hair, and his dedication to getting everything just right.

After lunch, me and Paola’s presentation, and an impromptu visit to a medieval church, we headed to the archaeological site. This was probably my favorite part of the day. The site was so weird in its emptiness, its in-betweenness of life and death, especially now that no bodies actually remained save for our twenty first century ones. As we were walking around, Fannie commented to me how crazy it is that for a culture so brutal, how much emphasis the Romans placed on honoring the dead. Likewise, even though Rome conquered the Etruscans, they still showed an interest in and respect for the culture. Perhaps the two go hand in hand though, as the reading says that “Rome became more interested in Etruscan civilization once that people had been subdued.” To want to conquer or kill something, they must be worth the effort.

I also, predictably, thought a lot about anchorites (medieval recluses, mostly female, who would be ritually entombed in a cell for life; I’m obsessed with them). Entering these tombs as a living person, standing in a place that is so full of death but also life, felt very true to the space occupied by the anchorite. Walking in a line from tomb to tomb, I also thought about processions of many sorts – particularly medieval entombment rituals but also the triumphal archways that reenact the triumph with each passage underneath. The continuing of past steps and actions.

A few of the tombs now had nests in them. Birds have felt like a motif in my year thus far, as I wrote a lot about them for multiple classes; about their pervasiveness and consistence, how they are one of the few creatures aside from bugs that somehow are able to permeate every space through their song. They are apt metaphors for humans with their clustering in groups and their means of vocal communication, but also are distinctly themselves. I felt really attached to the ones we saw that day, nesting in the tombs, fascinated at how they transformed the space.

While everyone else was resting or exploring, Sebastiano took some of us on a bit of a trek to see a tomb that was unfinished, the Mengarelli Tumulus. It was never occupied, rather just empty and waiting. Although there were no birds in this one, there were many spiders, so I’m glad it ended up being someone’s home after all.

It felt like a day that created the perfect blend of different time periods which felt true to my experience of Rome thus far, how it incorporates the past with the present in a way that attempts to stay true to both.