Wow it has been a bit since my last post! What have i done since then?! Last weekend five friends and i went to Rome. We were there for three full days and got to really explore the city and it was so much fun! It is a really touristy city but great for a visit. We also had to do sketches of analysis for our sketching class for multiple areas, as well as observe a topic of choice to document. I chose green space in urban fabric for the fact that a lot of cities have become to dense and lack green space to bring nature into the man made.

The first day we went to the Vatican and went through Saint Peters and the Sistine Chapel. I got to see paintings by Michelangelo and Raphael. It was some of the most beautiful work i have ever seen. Saint peters was like nothing i have ever seen. And because we were also doing work for studio, i looked at the plaza out front and the design of the zones inside of the cathdral and ended up using what i figured out about the zones of the cathedral in our project. When we walked over to go see the Sistine Chapel, we had to walk through the longest path through what felt like the entire museum to get to the actual chapel. But in the museum we saw a map that the vatican had made a very long time ago of what the world looked like and the Americas where like a big blob looking thing on the left hand side. It was really funny to see. After that, four of us went to go see the Colosseum and the Roman Forum, which is an area of roman ruins where royalty as well as other events occured right next door to the Colosseum. The green space that ihave noticed so far in Rome is where the ruins lay. The ruins are surrounded by greenery and not touched for preservation purposes. Other than that there doesnt appear to be other green spaces other than the trees along the river. We ended the day meeting up with the rest of the people at the Spanish Steps, which is supposed to have lots of potted greenery, but apparently in the winter it is barren except for the people sitting on the steps. I would love to see the difference that the plants make to the steps when they are all out. In pictures it looks amazing.

The second day we started with a trek to go see the pantheon. We have learned so much about it that it was something we all had to see and put aside a lot of time for. When we got there we walked around and sketched the relationship of the interior space to the exterior space. It was a really neat building to see, but kind of anti-climactic to what i thought i was going to see. But it was definately an awesome building. After the Pantheon we roamed through the city to see multiple plazas and the Trevi Fountain that is a very big tourist attraction. At the fountain we got to get Gelati which is amazing! As expected to be in Italy. I did studies of circulation and zones in multiple plazas so that i could use them as precedence studies for my studio project, and created pages of sketches to bring back for the studies.

The third day we woke up and went to see the pope speak at the Vatican and that was soooo cool. There were a lot of people there, but not as many as i expected to see on a sunday morning. He gave a speech in seven languages! It was pretty cool to hear. After that we went as a group to a plaza called Campo Doglio and then my studio group split of and we did more studies of plazas for our project. It was a pretty relaxed day, i got to try these folded pizza thing and a beer. It was an awesome lunch. Then we walked around until later in the day and went to a nice italian dinner for the third time. Such good food!

We woke up monday morning at 3am to cath a bus to the airport. It was such a bad idea to have an early am flight because the bus doesnt run as often and rome was freezing! But we got to the airport and on the plane and then directly back to Barcelona and studio.

Rome was a really cool city, but very touristy. I would love to go back and travel the areas outside of the city. At the end of the trip i realized that there are a decent amount of green spaces around the city, but they are mainly located around Roman ruins. It is a very chaotic city, yet very cool at the same time. Maybe i will take my family back there and i can see it from a different point of view!