Rome: Capitoline Museums, Colosseum

On our third day in Rome, we visited the Capitoline Museums in the morning.  The Capitoline Museums are a vast and rich collection of artifacts from the history of Rome.

The Museums were built originally to house a few critically important bronze sculptures.  One of them depicted a moment in one of the founding legends of Rome: when a she-wolf found the abandoned Romulus and Remus, and raised them as her own.

Later on, we studied the uniqueness and the commonness of the Colosseum, and observed how it compared to other theaters and public spaces we had seen in Athens.  Claire has been documenting the formation of national identity (a potential final project?) and considered the Colosseum carefully in relation to the ways Romans constructed their identities.

We learned about gladiator fights and other public entertainments that took place in the Colosseum.  Max, Griffin, JJ, Roarke, and Zach practiced deciding a gladiator's fate!

Photos by Hannah Welch