The Via Appia by Steven

To start the day I woke up, had the typical breakfast, then set out with the group to see the mouth of truth (which is really just a manhole cover that has been shaped into a face with an open mouth). It is said if you stick your hand in its mouth and you are a liar it will bite your hand off. I apparently was not a liar. Afterward we got snacks and went into the baths of Caracalla, which was the second biggest roman bathhouse in Rome. One thing I have learned on this trip is that any roman building that was useful to the Christian church ie. the baths of Diocletian, or the Parthenon, aged pretty well. Anything else was stripped for parts and used to make a new church. The baths of Caracalla, although they were probably big enough for 4-5 churches, were apparently not very useful to the church and were not well cared for as a result, but some mosaics were still left and the size of the outer walls was truly humbling.

​After checking those out, we headed to THE VIA APPIA. 

When our Latin class (Austin, Steven, Michael, Andrea, Emily, John, and Grace) was still in the early days of learning Latin we read through a textbook series called “Ecce Romani” (Look Romans). In part of the series (which I have become a raging fan of) our favorite characters Sextus molestus, Gaius, Aurelia and Cornelia’s carriage had been run off the Appian way by a light two wheeled carriage. We translated their adventures of attempting to get out of the ditch for (at least what felt like) a solid 3 months. Ever since then the cringe worthy, kindergarten level phrase “raeda in fossa est,” (The carriage is in the ditch) has been somewhat of a class meme. Therefore, I was very excited to see the “real spot!” on the Via Appia where the raedareally was in fossa est, despite the fact that Ecce was a fictional book. 

In the ditch!

Strolling down the Via Appia

That’s why I was really disappointed when our Via Appia journey, which by the way had taken almost 2 miles longer than anticipated, was interrupted by a tour of the catacombs of St. Sebastian. However I was quickly appeased.

San Sebastiano

​The catacombs were awesome, and I can see why so many textbooks, movies and videogames (Skyrim in particular) would take inspiration from them. Any feeble attempt by me to describe them wouldn’t do them justice, so here are some pictures (which we did not take ourselves by the way… that would be disrespectful). 

Just for kicks, here is a picture from the videogame Skyrim which was inspired by the Roman empire and catacombs. You can see the eerie similarity in the layout of the tombs.

Each corpse would be wrapped in a linen, then their grave would be sealed off by quicklime and a marble headstone. According to our tour guide 60,000 + people have been buried there and it is one of the 20 catacombs of ancient Rome lining the roads on the outskirts of the city. No dead were allowed to be buried inside the city.

​After seeing St. Sebastian’s tomb, the catacombs, and the church on top, we resume our Appian journey. I found several modern “raeda”s parked in what is left on the fossa on the side. Not that the road is in bad shape, the original stones are there with the marks of passing carriage wheels still readily visible in them, but the ditch isn’t as grand as the one in Ecce. Nonetheless, our class found the fossa-iest fossa we could find and posed for a long awaited picture. Although, having walked several miles along the paved portion of the Via Appia just to get there, the rest of the group –NOT ME- but the rest of the group decided it was time to take a bus back to the metro and travel to the Spanish steps for freetime.

​The free time was also great today. Due to our late lunch on the Via Appia, dinner and our free time was combined in a certain area of the city. I got gelato, and 1 kilo of pasta for 10 euro before meeting up with another group to have dinner. We sat down at the first restaurant with room for 7, which was easy to find because every restaurant on the street has a person outside trying to coax people into the doors. After dinner we went shopping and I don’t do a lot of shopping, but I think I walked into some of the nicest stores I think I’ve ever been to in my life. They were all extremely upscale, with awesome, custom tailored interior design and had some ridiculous pricetags to go with it. For me it was all window shopping, but at some of the more reasonable places others were feeling bold and decided to buy an Italian clothes. We then headed back to Casa la Salle and I was finally able to sleep.

On the Spanish Steps ready to head to the Metro back to Casa la Salle