Earlier this year, we were fortunate to resume our Parent Tour program with small groups. Parent and alumni participants appreciated the opportunity to learn from our faculty about the two Jesuit churches Sant'Ignazio and il Gésu, the Keats and Shelley House, Campus Martius (Field of Mars), Fori Imperiali, Rome’s ancient theatres, street art, and industrial heritage in Testaccio and Ostiense, the Banksy exhibition at the Chiostro del Bramante and the Capitoline Hill. Many of the participants describe these outings with fellow community members as a beacon of hope in challenging times.
This academic year, our collaboration with the American University of Rome (AUR) expanded into an extraordinary partnership between the Lyceum and the archaeology and classics department at AUR: the Aventinus Minor Project (AMP). This partnership between St Stephen’s, AUR and the Istituto Santa Margherita home for the elderly (the AMP site, right above the SSS sports courts) is designed as a community archaeology project for the benefit of all of our students, AUR undergraduates in archaeology and classics, people living on the Aventine (including the elderly at the Istituto Santa Margherita) and anyone who would like to be part of it (parents, alumni, etc.).
Exploring the Aventine Hill right next to St Stephen’s, something that has not ever been attempted systematically, will engage students in classics, history, science, math, technology, art, and modern languages to gain critical knowledge of archaeology, including the methodology of excavating and archaeological drawing, hard sciences, including archaeobotany and other interdisciplinary fields such as zooarchaeology, 3D laser scanning, and printing, archival studies, record keeping, iconography, cartography, topography, and photography. In short, it is a pathbreaking, state-of-the-art archaeological excavation.
The excitement generated by this project is clear, judging from the high number of participants in the Aventinus Minor Project summer course that was held online in July 2020 and the number of donors and volunteers supporting the project.
This spring, students in their City of Rome 1 classes were the first to participate, as they studied the history and archaeology of the Aventine Hill with an AUR intern who was involved in the first phase of the AMP, bibliographical and topographical research, last summer.
We are looking forward to the end of the pandemic when we will continue to expand all of the Lyceum program offerings and really kick the Aventinus Minor Project into high gear. In the meantime, I look forward to sharing with you again very soon.
Thank you for your continued interest and support.
A presto!