Social, Cultural Heritage

April 10, 2013

image1When I first signed up for clas­sics and archae­ol­ogy classes, I thought most of my time would be play­ing in the dirt, teach­ing, hang­ing out in libraries and the occa­sional con­fer­ences.  If you had asked me about the social side to acad­e­mia, I prob­a­bly would’ve laughed, maybe even made a joke about the Archaeologist’s cocktail/mosquito repel­lent Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Documentaries, Latin Tags , , , , ,

The Splendors of Ancient Rome in 3D

April 3, 2013

I’m very excited to share the update on The Splen­dors of Ancient Rome, a 3-D doc­u­men­tary for Edu­ca­tional Broad­cast Sys­tem (EBS) South Korea where I appear as pre­sen­ter.  The doc­u­men­tary film will be air­ing May 5, 6 and 7 in one of Seoul’s famous cin­ema the­aters, and hope­fully I will get to see it.  I had a great time film­ing and am really proud to work with esteemed col­leagues at EBS and also Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Ray Law­er­ence and Jorge Beste to talk about Ancient Rome.

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Discussion Leave a comment Category Archaeology, Culture, Documentaries, Rome Tags , ,

Pyramid of Cestius under wraps

January 31, 2013

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Finally. The promised restora­tion project of the Augus­tan period Pyra­mid of Ces­tius has begun, with pri­vate Japan­ese funds. It took 330 days to con­struct the tomb, says the in situ inscrip­tion. Let’s see how long it takes to com­plete the project.

I will be post­ing pho­tos of the progress on my Insta­gram account @Saverome, Con­tinue read­ing →

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Save the Gladiator Tomb, Sign the iPetition

December 9, 2012

Please join me in voic­ing your con­cern for sav­ing the Gladiator’s Tomb, a unique cul­tural her­itage site that runs the risk of being reburied per­ma­nently for lack of fund­ing.  Together with the AIRC, I am hop­ing to get 5,000 sig­na­tures on the iPe­ti­tion to save the Gladiator’s Tomb.

In 2008, on the Via Flaminia in the north­ern part of con­tem­po­rary Rome, archae­ol­o­gist found an impres­sive mar­ble mau­soleum, among other note­wor­thy tombs, along a well-preserved sec­tion of ancient road.  Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion 22 Comments Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Excavation, Rome Tags , , , , , , ,

Beyond the Past: sponsoring cultural heritage in Rome

October 24, 2012

marforioThe other day, as I viewed the new exhibit, L’eta’ dell’equilibrio, in the Capi­to­line Muse­ums, I pleas­antly came across the ongo­ing con­ser­va­tion project of the Mar­forio statue in the court­yard of the Brac­cio Nuovo.   The colos­sal, reclin­ing river god became one of Rome’s most famous “talk­ing stat­ues” and was located in the Roman Forum before being trans­ferred to the Capi­to­line Hill.

The spon­sor is Swarovski, and its 100,000 euro con­tri­bu­tion rep­re­sents a new phe­nom­e­non that Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion Leave a comment Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Excavation, Latin, Rome, Sponsorship Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,

Digging through time

October 18, 2012

There is so much talk in the news– you can’t escape it– about the many hot new online edu­ca­tional sites.  These  include courses listed by uni­ver­si­ties (for exam­ple Yale and Stan­ford),  MITx, edX, Udac­ity, Cours­era, and TED lec­tures. but prob­a­bly none is hot­ter Khan Acad­emy, recently part­nered with SmartHis­tory, run by Dr. Steven Zucker and Dr. Beth Har­ris.   After cor­re­spond­ing with them  on Twit­ter, I had the good for­tune to meet with them this past July and become a con­trib­u­tor for SmartHis­tory, Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion 1 Comment Category Rome Tags , , , , , , , , , ,

Caligula: 1400 Days of Terror

October 8, 2012

Photo source: historychannel.com

Caligula: 1400 Days of Ter­ror has aired in the US on Octo­ber 9 and will air in Italy on Octo­ber 28.  I had a lot of fun film­ing this doc­u­men­tary in Rome and Her­cu­la­neum, and am proud to be part of a great group which includes col­leagues here in Rome: Valerie Hig­gins, Gabriel Radle and Katie Parla.

Discussion 3 Comments Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Documentaries Tags , , , ,

Living History in Rome day by day

May 11, 2012

Liv­ing in Rome has proved to be an excit­ing adven­ture over the past 20 years, more inter­est­ing than I could have imag­ined. Now, as the sum­mer sea­son is upon us– with sev­eral over­lap­ping pro­grams and a slew of doc­u­men­taries to film– I can’t help but reflect on the many ways I get to live his­tory daily in Rome.

Latin dead? Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion 2 Comments Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Documentaries, Excavation, Latin, Rome, Sponsorship Tags , , , , , , , , , , ,

Hadrian’s Villa and the proposed landfill– the straw that broke the camel’s back

March 15, 2012

The shock­ing deci­sion to cre­ate a mas­sive land­fill within a few hun­dred meters of Hadrian’s Villa, one of most well known, impor­tant cul­tural her­itage sites in the world is, to say the least, aston­ish­ing.  Con­tinue read­ing →

Discussion 3 Comments Category Archaeology, Conservation, Culture, Excavation, Rome, Sponsorship Tags , , ,

Dangerous Cocktail — snow, freezing pigeons, excited crowds don’t mix

February 16, 2012

Still cold here in Rome, but the snow will fade soon into the back­ground of everyone’s mem­ory.  So just a fol­low up from the lovely walks around the cen­tro the past 2 week­ends.  For a refresher, check out these images from Feb­ru­ary 3 and Con­tinue read­ing →

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