November 24th-26th

Back in Rome we had a couple days to tour around the city before Thanksgiving break, so the first stop on Monday the 24th during History class was Santa Maria Maggiore (Saint Mary Major).

The church is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. The church is built on the Esquiline Hill and was built there to commemorate the Miracle of the Snows, which is also why the church is dedicated to Our Lady of the Snows (the Virgin Mary) and an apparition had by a local patrician and the pope. These events happened as the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared to the the patrician and the pope on the same night and instructed both them to go to the Esquiline Hill where in the morning they would find a plot of land covered in snow. The next morning the pope then led a procession to the spot indicated in the dream and discovered that snow had fallen on the Esquiline Hill. Since it was summer and snow never fell at that time in Rome, the pope deemed this miraculous occurrence a miracle and the patrician then funded the building of Santa Maria Maggiore.



An amazing mosaic depicting Christ crowning Mary as the Queen of Heaven.

The large column, originally from the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine, stands alone in front of the church facade.
Then on Tuesday the 25th my Urbanism class visited the Baths of Diocletian. The amazing ancient structure of these Baths is still mostly intact, and a good portion of the Baths were redesigned by Michelangelo in the 16th century as the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. This is an interior view of the church's apse.

On Wednesday the 26th, my Theology class had an AMAZING opportunity with our professor Monsignor Wells to visit St. Peters Basilica and the scavi, or crypt, beneath the Basilica. First we visited the scavi underneath the Basilica, which was originally a burial ground of ancient Rome. Walking along the ancient streets between the mausoleums where the great Roman families were buried we were headed for some of the most hallowed ground in the known Catholic world- St. Peter's burial place. So after we got a quick tour of the rest of the scavi, we stopped at the resting place of St. Peter. The spot is directly underneath the Baldacchino of St. Peters which covers the main altar of the Basilica.

Another amazing feature of our personal tour with Monsignor Wells was that when we came up from the scavi and entered the Basilica we entered through the door underneath the Bernini sculpture depicted Pope Alexander VII.


Yes, I got to walk through that door.

Pretty good week leading up to my trip to Dublin for Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving!