Ruins of Italica
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2007
1
Trip End
Jan 11, 2007
The day after we moved in with our host families CIEE had a group trip to the ruins of Italica, an ancient Roman city outside of Sevilla. They believe the city was founded in 205 BC, crazy!! Althought a lot of the stuff has fallen down, it was still so cool because obviously we have nothing remotely that old in the United States. And I really like stuff like that because I'm always thinking, I wonder who walked right where I'm walking right now...haha. There were a lot of remains of houses, as you will see in the pictures, and a few statues that they have preserved. They also have cool pictures next to certain ruins of what they think they would've looked like if they were still completely standing. There were also many really cool tiled mural like things, I'm forgetting the Spanish name for them right now, that they had preserved too, they were amazing. Sometimes I just marvel at how smart the Romans were, soooo ahead of their time! The most amazing part of the ruins by far was the amphitheater. It was huuuge! They said it was one of the 3 biggest in the Roman empire, and a lot of it was still standing, it was absolutely breathtaking. Everybody gasped when we walked in! It was so big but they guides said that in reality it was much bigger before it started crumbling. I felt like I could almost see the gladiators and stuff in the arena. We also got to walk through the inner tunnels of the amphitheater, where the competitors waited and stuff. So neat! My host dad thought it was funny how cool I thought it was because he said there's much better ruins in other parts of Europe. This is true, but this being my first ancient ruin excursion, I was fascinated.
Comments
lucky duck!
i'm so so excited for you stepho : ) i just learned about a lot of that stuff in my literature class. we talked about the ampitheater and about the romans. it was all so interesting and to be able to see all of it must be amazing. i can't wait to hear more baby cakes. we're all missing you over here in the tundra... its a whopping 10 degrees right now! eek.
Bambini!!
Hey stepho! I'm so excited for you! It sounds like everything is going a lot better than your flight over there, lol. We all miss you tons here! But it'll go by fast. Hope everything is going great! love you!
Cool blog!
Glad to see you're having a good time. I'll have to make one of these when I go to Seville in the summer. One question: does your host family have internet access? Or do you use a laptop at internet cafes, or what?