About Sede di Roma
The architectural engineering department sends a number of students to the Sede di Roma for seven weeks each summer. While in Rome, these students engage a curriculum consisting of lectures, design studios, and directed field trips of Rome and select cities around Italy. Students complete 12 credits of architectural design, architectural history and related courses.
The obvious success of Roman and Medieval architects in producing large clear span spaces, high domes and vaults, and other successful feats of structural engineering invites an investigation of their methods of structural analysis and design. These courses will explore what we know or can find out about this topic through investigation of artifacts and review of texts. Although the courses will require thoughtful reading, looking at buildings, and investigations, the material will be presented at an elementary level, requiring no more than a first semester of statics as preparation (EMech 11 or AE 210).
The program of study will include two organized field trips to a number of sites selected from the following: Pompei, Ercolano, and Paestum; the Italian hill town of Umbria and Tuscany; as well as Firenze, Venezia, Parma, Verona and/or Vicenza. The cost of hotel accommodations and travel during these organized field trips are covered by student tuition fees. (University tuition bill will include a several hundred dollar "field trip fee") Additional costs are the responsibility of the student.
Students will have the chance to visit other locations before/after the scheduled field trips. Places that students have travelled to on their own inclue:
- Sorrento, IT
- Capri, IT
- Lake Como, IT
- Milan, IT
- Barcelona, ES
- Paris, FR
- Amsterdam, NE
- London, UK
- Sperionga, IT (a beach about an hour from Rome)
- Cinqueterra, IT
Planning for these side trips (including transportation back to Rome) is the responsibility of the individual students.
About Rome
The city of Rome, with a population of 2.7 million, is the capital city of the Lazio Region and Rome Province and has been the capital of united Italy since 1871. It is located on the Tiber River, in the western central part of the country about 15km from the Tyrrhenian Sea. For centuries, Rome has been called the Eternal City, a title earned through its importance as one of the great cities of Western civilization, as the capital of the Roman Empire, and as the world center of the Roman Catholic church. The seat of the papacy of the Roman Catholic church, Vatican City, most of which is located in an enclave within Rome, has been recognized as an independent state by the Italian government since 1929. The majestic dome of Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City is one of the most predominant cupolas in the Roman skyline.
According to mythistory, Rome was founded in 753 BCE by Romulus and Remus on one of the Seven Hills of Rome, after the Etruscans had occupied the area for many centuries. The Seven Hills of Rome refer to the Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquiline, Caelian, Aventine, and Palatine hills surrounding the old community and the Tiber River, upon which Rome was founded. The Capitoline Hill (Monte Capitoline) was long the seat of Rome’s government, and the Palatine Hill was the site of such great structures as the Palace of the Flavians, built by the Roman emperor Domitian. As a result of construction through the centuries and periodic flooding of the Tiber River, most of the Seven Hills are now hardly distinguishable from the adjacent plain.