“Just back from a tremendous (but exhausting!) week with our Rome MA Ancient History/Archaeology students for this year. On Thursday we arranged a minivan to take us all out of the city of Rome–which the students are expert in now!–and off to Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli, a spectacular pleasure palace from the 2nd century AD. Since we were in Tivoli, though, it hardly made sense to miss the Villa D’Este: a grand Renaissance palace built by a cardinal and relative of the dukes of Ferrara in the 16th century. The gardens in particular were exquisite: the students were all awed at the fountains, and the spectacular view! After a day’s rest, on the Saturday we made the short and easy train journey to Ostia Antica, Rome’s ancient sea-port on the banks of the Tiber. We arrived around 10 and by 4:30 most of us were shattered. Fortunately a few soldiered on to see the Christian ruins and the synagogue by the Porta Marina; the rest of us headed to the café for a well-deserved drink in the sunshine. Here are a couple of snaps of us enjoying the blissful panorama from the Villa D’Este and admiring one of the largest and best-preserved mosaics in the ancient city of Ostia. We will definitely be going back to both next year!”
(sent in by Dr Christopher Burden-Strevens – Ancient History lecturer on our Rome MA programmes https://www.kent.ac.uk/secl/classics/staff/burden-strevens.html)