Seminar Location

Meeting in Rome | Housing and Expenses | Extra-curricular

Meeting in Rome

With Rome as the central location of the seminar, participants will be able to define their interests and responses with a kind of approximated ancient vision. Although larger in circumference than was its ancient foundation city, present day Rome is no more packed with buildings or seething with human activity than the original metropolis at its height. The experience of fitting oneself into this environment as a scholarly visitor can make a person think of the challenges that faced ancient newcomers into Rome.

Few cities can equal Rome’s richness in resources for recreating ancient experience. The museums and monuments offer an abundance of opportunities for on-site discussions and reports. Both the National Museum and the Capitoline house extensive, well-displayed collections of inscriptions in many formats, which provide one of our closest approaches to personal lives. All three major museums (the former two plus the Vatican) offer portraits of citizens from all periods and walks of life. Additionally the Museum of Roman Culture at EUR contains a large array of plaster casts that allow monuments to be studied in detail. Everything is easy of access so that participants will be able to make return visits to places of individual interest, especially interested in the figured friezes that depict work and ritual in action.

Housing and Expenses

The American Academy in Rome is an ideal institution to serve as host for the Seminar. As a major center for humanities research, the Academy has extensive experience in hosting NEH Summer Seminars. In its splendid setting on the Janiculum Hill overlooking Rome, the Academy provides a unique and stimulating intellectual community. It operates a fellowship program for scholars in a broad spectrum of humanistic and artistic disciplines including ancient studies, architecture, archaeology, design arts, historic preservation/conservation, landscape architecture, literature, Medieval studies, modern Italian studies, musical composition, Renaissance and early Modern studies, and visual arts. As Visiting Scholars seminar participants will be part of the community who come together at meals, lectures and gatherings to exchange ideas and perspectives across a range of disciplines. To foster such exchanges, seminar participants will be able to take their (moderately priced) meals together with their fellow participants, the seminar directors, and other members of the community at the Academy’s dining tables. The Academy’s Director hosts a reception to welcome and introduce seminar members during the first week.

Members of the seminar will have the opportunity of living within the Academy. Spaces available include two large multi-bedroom apartments each with a kitchen and two baths. The weekly cost of a single room in one of these will be 320 euros, a shared double 195 euros. There will also be a few single study/bedrooms with use of corridor kitchens and baths costing 285 euros and additional shared doubles @ 195. Since both lunch and dinner can be taken for a moderate price at the dining tables six days a week, the need for kitchens is minimal. The Academy does not have space suitable for the housing of families; Participants planning to bring families will need to make their arrangements independently.

The Academy will purchase tessere for free admission to all sites and monuments under the management of the National Ministry of Culture. These passes will be valid for the period of the seminar and a time beyond. Private museums (i.e. Vatican) and those controlled by local governments will grant free admission for arranged group visits, but all individual visits will be at the visitor’s expense. All group bus travel on field trips will be covered by the seminar budget; individuals may purchase city bus passes that afford discounts for fixed periods. The return trip from Campania during week 4 will be at individual expense: tickets range in price from 16 to 33 euros depending upon the speed and comfort of the train chosen.

Extra-curricular

Seminar participants will find a vast number of musical and performance events available throughout the high summer months. Concerts in historic locations take place almost every evening. Operas at the Baths of Caracalla have been reinstated in recent years. There are, of course, museums over and beyond the Classical, parks and gardens for walking, and shopping from high-end to flea-market.

At the end of the Campania trip, seminar members will have the option of spending the weekend in the Bay of Naples are for further sight-seeing.