Protestant Cemetery

Gravestone of Percy Shelley

Gravestone of John Keats

The Protestant/Non-Catholic Cemetery is the burial place of many famous writers, painter, sculptors, and diplomats who lived in Rome but were not Catholic. This is the burial spot of Percy Shelley and John Keats, two famous English Romantic Poets who lived Rome for a few years.

Analytical Drawing

One of the classes I am taking is a drawing class. These are a few pictures from our class today where we went out to a local market and tried to draw people in motion. We did a few quick drawings trying to show the space in general and the people walking/moving through. These two photos are from our teacher talking about my charcoal drawing (I think he was saying something awesome about them but obviously I was taking a picture/not paying attention).

Emergency Relief Housing

The project was to produce a semi-permanent solution to emergency relief housing. The site was L'Aquila, Italy - the site of a major earthquake last year. Our project was centered around the idea of flexible building blocks that would be able to transform into commercial use when the need for emergency housing ended. We didn't get to refine the project quite as much as I would have liked but 10 hours is not much time for a project like this.

Frugal Architecture

Sorry that the postings have been a little slow in coming but I have been pretty busy recently. This last Thursday, Friday and Saturday I participated in a lecture series and design competition. The lecture series was ok but the project was interesting. 11 ISU students participated as well as some other American students. The American students were all partnered with an Italian student and each pair had about 10 hours to design frugal emergency relief housing. My partner, Vincenzo Buongiorno, had a slightly more fixed view on architecture than I did but it was very interesting to hear his ideas. Attached is a link with more info on the lectures. I am also going to post the three page presentation that we created. It was received pretty well by one of the architects and Iowa State as a whole had a very good showing.
http://www.worldarchitecture.org/links/?waurl=http://www.abitare.it/events/archfrugale&newsno=1435

Inside the Colosseum

Palatine Hill

One of the seven hills of Rome and one of the most important. It is supposedly where Romulus and Remus were raised by a she-wolf (this is part of the legend of the founding of Rome). Many of the important Romans from the Republican period and some Emperors lived here too.

Forum

Temple of Castor and Pollux

Basilica of Maxentius - largest building in the forum


View over forum

Arch of Septimius Severus

I am currently taking a history class where we take tours of a part of Rome every Friday. We started with learning about the foundation of the city and Roman Republic. Our first walk was through the Roman Forum, the Palatine Hill and the Coloseum. These are all pictures from the Forum.

Skype

aaronmfoley - chat me up

Cappuccino e cornetto

Apartment Courtyard

The courtyard has lemon and tangerine trees from which I have harvested a few meals already.

Apartment Location

So this is the location of my neighborhood. I am in the Testevere region of Rome (across the river from the forum - the "A" on the map). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trastevere. I am in walking distance of my studio which is on the other side of the Tiber Island in the old Jewish Ghetto (by the Synagogue). I am pretty close to every ancient roman landmark and have been able to walk to everything I have wanted to see so far. I am about a 20/25 minute walk south of the Vatican City.

Apartment

Living Room
My roomate Clark

Our giant bathroom (there are three in our apartment and three bedrooms - a 2 bed, a 4 bedroom, and a 5 bedroom)
My Bed

There are 11 guys in my apartment and 4 apartments of ISU students and Northeastern students in our area. My room only has two beds in it though so it is pretty quiet. We are in a gated apartment complex with a central courtyard with a garden in it. It is a former hospice but I think it is just an apartment complex now (even though there are still old people here). Its is really calm and peaceful. It is close to a busy road though so there is a little bit of traffic during the day. Overall, the apartment is nice and the area we are living in is great.

Comments

I think I changed the comments section so anyone can comment. Please feel free to let me know if you like what you are seeing and what else you are interested about.

Images from near the apartment

I'll try to get pictures up for my apartment in the next couple of days. Until then, here is a teaser of my neighborhood

The Colosseum

Tiber River

Tiber River rising up to the Isola Tiberina (Tiber Island)

View of St. Peter's over Tiber

Tiber River covering walkway by Piazza dei Tribunali

It's been raining recently (and a lot before I got here) so the Tiber river is rising quite a bit. The river was higher last but it looks like the Romans are still a little worried about it/interested. There have been more people photographing the river than many of the monuments.

School tomorrow

School starts back up tomorrow (boo). I have a bunch of pictures to post from the last few days that I hope to get up this week but the blog might slow down a little after that. I'll try to keep everyone updated on what I am doing in classes unless it is really boring in which case you will get nothing. Deal with it.

Food

Rome wanderings

Piazza Navona Christmas Market
There were hundreds of people packed into the square for the last day of the Christmas celebration. It was pretty much a carnival with street venders, games, music and a merry-go-round. There were also kids throwing up all over the place (probably from the nasty looking candy apples).

Me Eating

Other assorted Milan pics

Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II

This is pretty much just a covered shopping area. It was still really cool though and one of my favorite sights in Milan. It is located right next to the cathedral and it, as well as the rest of the area around the cathedral, was full of people shopping at designer stores (and McDonald's). Right now almost everywhere is having a sale but I don't have any extra money to spend on Ferrari skis.