Day 5- June 4

Today we ventured back to the strikingly beautiful Trastevere, the historic Jewish quarter and birthplace of early Christianity in Rome. The hill of Trastevere overlooks a one-of-a-kind view of Roma, and to claim the land for our own digital cameras we came, saw, cried, and conquered many, many steps. Our goal was both to explore the old churches to study Early Christian Origins in the context of Roman history and to swarm the Spanish Embassy. The latter part of our goal was desperately thwarted at the last minute by a strikingly stoic Spanish guard with a feather in his hat. I didn't tell him that the Swiss Guards get to wear colors; he had so much pride in his personal fashion work.

One church in Trastevere that Dr. Sebastian was not interested whatsoever is the oldest church in Rome, Santa Maria de Trastevere. Unfortunately, we did not have time to see it as a group, but I plan to return and build it over with something designed more like Il Vaticano. Il Vaticano does not have nearly enough copycat churches in Roma.

We did, however, explore Crisogono, which contains the alarmingly well preserved body of Beata Anna Maria Taigi, and Santa Cecilia, where we saw more excavations of a Roman domus. In Santa Cecilia, in fact, it was the large domus of the Saint herself's wealthy family that was converted into a church. A great number of fascinating fragments and inscriptions survive from this household, from the masive granary room to the lararium shrine to the household gods. Also underneath Santa Cecilia we saw our first crypt. Throughout these excavations was evidence of how the early Christians adapted preexisting pagan concepts and symbols into their faith and art: the laers of the lararium resembling pagan Juno, the pagan Juno's peacock symbol used to represent Christian eternal life, and the inclusion of ancient gods and goddesses in the mosaic as they left.

After all this morning education, and a most enlightening first afternoon class of Saints, Poets, and Popes with Dr. Sebastian, the rest of this day was spent in social diversions, playing catch-up on homework, and the official new cheapest gelateria in the city.