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By mcbitter

One of my favorite things about Paris is simply how beautiful it is. The French love their city's detailing, like cast iron balconies, tree-lined streets, and green space. Basically, anywhere you look is a perfect photo for Instagram, even if it's just a random apartment building.

Arguably, one of the most important influences making Paris what it is today was a man named Georges-Eugène Haussmann. In the 1850's, Haussmann was hired by Napoleon III to reorganize the layout of Paris. Prior to his involvement, it was an incredibly crowded, dangerous, and unhealthy place to live. Streets were narrow and dark, there was no waste removal system, and population density only added to the problems. So, Haussmann started by creating large boulevards throughout the city, the most well-known of which is the Avenue des Champs-Élysées. My school here in Paris, Sciences Po, is actually located on one of these large boulevards right next to the Seine, the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Haussmann also put lights on these streets (they don't call it the City of Lights for nothing!) to make it safer, and built new sewer tunnels to combat the rampant disease.

All of these contributions are very important, but when I think of Haussmann, I think of the "Haussmann building." This building, which is usually apartments, is easy to recognize because of its uniform exterior. They were usually built with cream colored stone, with a mansard-style roof, and had balconies on the second and fifth floors. (Keep in mind that the French have a ground floor and then a first floor, so second and fifth is really third and sixth for us!) Although Paris is really expensive now, these buildings were meant to house families of different economic backgrounds under one roof. For example, wealthy families would live on the second floor, or the "étage noble," because it wasn't on the street level but didn't involve too many stairs, either (there were no elevators back then!). On the other hand, the very top floor had individual rooms ("chambres des bonnes") and was occupied by servants of these wealthy families who lived below them.

Overall, Haussmann changed the face of Paris for centuries to come. Unfortunately, he had a number of critics as well, many of whom complained that his architecture was too uniform and that he was overtaking the city with construction. This resulted in his dismissal in 1870, though his work continued for many years after.

By catrionaschwartz

When you have a limited amount of time to see a place it is easy to take in whatever site it is you are seeing with one glance and move on. Piazza Navona was one of those places for me until I had to do research on the fountain there for an art history class. While even in a cursory glance shows that the Piazza is beautiful it is also one of those sites that will almost always be filled with tourists, day or night. It is in the top 10 of all the Rome: Must See lists because of the massive fountain in the middle, known as the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi. Like the nearby Trevi Fountain, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi draws in major traffic.

Because of this, the piazza bears a painful resemblance to all of the other main tourist sites of Rome, on a surface level anyway. There are a slew of over-priced restaurants around the piazza, men selling bootleg sunglasses and purses and artists selling cartoon drawings of celebrities (lots of Obamas and Angelina Jolies for example) and nameless paintings of Rome. The familiarity of it all can be off-putting. As I said, after I saw the fountain for the first time, I didn’t feel a strong pull to go back and see it again, until I had to do a project on the main fountain. What I found out about it was actually pretty fascinating.

The man who designed the fountain, Bernini, had won the commission for the fountain in a contest held by Pope Innocent X (who had a palazzo on one side of the piazza and a church which he sponsored on the other). The fountain is made up of four male figures, sat on top of realistic rocks and topped with an ancient Egyptian obelisk. The four figures represent the four major rivers of the world in the continents where papal authority had spread. There was the Nile River for Africa, the Ganges River for Asia, the Rio de la Plata for the Americas, and the Danube for Europe. Each of the figures also have smaller details to show an educated viewer which river they represent.

The figure of the Nile has a cloth over its head to represent the fact that no one knew where the source of the Nile was. The figure of the Ganges is holding an oar, to represent how easy it is to navigate the river. The Danube River figure is touching the Pamphili coat of arms since it was Pope Innocent X who had commissioned the fountain and the Danube was the closest to Rome. The last figure, that representing the Rio de la Plata (literally River of Silver), is sitting on a pile of coins to show the wealth that the Americas provided Rome.

The fountain shows what a real presence the pope and the papal state had not just in Europe but in the world. Today the Church is a spiritual authority but in that period it was an earthly, political authority as well. The figure for Rio de la Plata shows this the most clearly, as it obviously references earthly actions of the Church. The Rio de la Plata figure is also cowering—most likely because of the snake (representing loss of wealth) rearing towards it. There is a story however that Bernini placed the cowering Rio de la Plata figure facing the church of Sant’Agnese because Pope Innocent X had given the commission for that church to Bernini’s rival, Borromini. The figure is cowering because it is afraid the church will collapse due to Borromini’s poor design plan.

Finding all of these stories about the fountain made me want to go back and it made me realize that sight-seeing takes effort. Sometimes you have to research and prepare to really get the most out of what you are seeing!

By catrionaschwartz

Sculpture 1

Aside from the millions of humans that live in Rome, there must be just as many statues. From a nameless angel perched above the high altar of a church to glowering gods of the sea, wrapped in octopi, hunched around fountains—Rome is chock-full of marble citizens.

Sculpture 2This guy could be from Brooklyn if it weren't for the collar.

sculpture 3

It is one of my favorite aspects of the architecture here but far from the last. The dilapidated streets of the old Jewish Ghetto, for example, are equally beautiful. In a sentimental way they almost conjure the sort of Romantic-era notions about ruin.

Jewish ghetto 1“The ideas ruins evoke in me are grand. Everything comes to nothing, everything perishes, everything passes, only the world remains, only time endures.”
-Diderot
(More on ruins and romanticism here)

Aside from any sort of existential appreciation these buildings inspire though, there is also the transformation they’ve undergone to consider. As part of orientation for my IES Rome program we had an aperitivo at a pottery painting studio in a 16th century building known as Palazzo Delfino, in the Ghetto. Palazzo Delfino was supposedly the one-time home of St. Ignatius and his companions in the mid-16th century. In the years following the building was rumored to be haunted.
Centuries later, Lori-Ann Touchette, an American academic, and her partner, artist Paolo Porelli founded their ceramics studio there and restored the space as much as they could to its original parameters. One day, not long after their opening, an old man came to the door. They let him in and he told them how he and his family had lived in one of the small backrooms for four months during the Second World War, with the walls bricked up and people passing them down food and water.

Ghetto 2

The repurposing of old buildings—from 16th century palazzo to modern day pottery studio—is a phenomenon that I’ve seen around the city a number of times now. The Torre Argentina Cat Sanctuary is another amazing example of it. The sanctuary is situated in the ruins of four Roman temples and Pompey’s Theatre—allegedly where Julius Caesar was assassinated in the year 44 BC. The site was later built over and was not revealed again until the 1920s.

Cat sanctuary

From that point onward, stray cats began to inhabit the site, fed by a number of women in the neighborhood. An official sanctuary for them was not founded until 1994 however. Now over 90 cats call the ruins their home. There is something wonderful about seeing the cats among the ruins. These buildings, which hadn’t been continuously inhabited for century after century after century are now once again filled with life—albeit the feline kind.

(More info on the cat sanctuary here)

Just like the pottery studio, the extent of the ruin’s narrative is not clear from first glance. Of course it looks old—ancient in the case of the ruins—but not all of the history is apparent at first glance. The same can be said of some of the churches here. Despite somewhat simple facades, many seemingly modest churches hold masterworks.

ChurchThis church had a simple, stone facade but the inside was covered in marble and gold.

Finding out what is under the surface of these buildings is something I’ve loved doing in these first two weeks here in Rome—that and knowing that there is much that I’ve yet to discover. Arrivederci!