This summer, 10 Students and two faculty members are traveling to Italy to examine the Etruscan, Greek, Roman, medieval, renaissance and modern footprints on the Italian peninsula and in Sicily. Please enjoy this blog post below from Jonathan ’28 where he shares about a day of exploring Lipari’s rich archaeological treasures, reflecting on mythology by the sea, and celebrating the group’s smooth arrival on the shores of Reggio Calabria.
At 8:30 a.m, after a quick breakfast at the Hotel Arcangelo, our group boarded a ferry bound for Lipari, leaving behind us the peaceful retreat of the island of Salina.
The ferry ride was, relative to our past one, short and we soon arrived on Lipari and started trekking through the winding streets of the island. After our group surmounted the incline, we found ourselves on top of a hill overlooking the sea; to our right, our destination, the Archeological Museum Luigi Bernabò Brea, loomed as a solitary sentinel over the azure expanse, leading one to wander about the centuries that have passed before its ancient walls. I stood, expecting the sea winds to liberate me from the heat of Italian summer, but soon realized that even in the Aeolian islands, where the Greek god of the winds, Aeolus, was said to reside, this is a rare-found luxury.
After a short break outside, our group continued into the museum. Though it looked like a fort from the outside, the museum was actually an assortment of multiple buildings, churches, and ruins from different eras, the oldest dating as far back as the neolithic age (roughly 1500 BCE). Following the lead of one of our two tour guides, Sophia, we explored houses exhibiting clay and obsidian artifacts excavated from Lipari and other Aeolian islands, including Panarea, the island we hiked on the day before. One of the rooms that caught my attention was one where an excavation site was recreated; one could see half-buried clay pots littering the floor just as the archaeologists once saw them. After the rooms of Hellenistic culture, we also saw an ancient Greek styled amphitheater, walked through rooms with Roman artifacts and entered a medieval cathedral dedicated to Saint Bartholomew. These are paragons of how the museum and Sicily as a whole is a fusion of multiple cultures.
Tired by the excursion of the museum, our group made our way down to the shore where we enjoyed a lunch of meat and cheese platters, sicilian pizza, and granita. After lunch we split into two groups and dived into a section of the Latin poem Aeneid by Vergil describing Aeolus and the winds under his control. As Dr. Houston (A.K.A. Doc) read the excerpt to our group out loud in Latin, the Mediterranean sea shimmered behind him and one could almost discern the tip of an ancient Greek trireme rising from the distant horizon carrying on it the heroes told by Homer and Vergil.
After lunch we were given some free-time in the beautiful seaside town. Some of us used the time to explore the town and buy souvenirs while others, myself included, chose to relax under a shade with a cold drink. We departed Lipari at 3:45, once again, on a ferry. Yet, this time we were bound for mainland Italy.
I am proud to say that we had much less trouble than Odysseus in crossing the strait said to be the home of Scylla and Carybdis. After roughly two hours, we had, for the first time of our trip, set foot on mainland Italy!
Our boat docked at a seaside city named Reggio Calabria where we were staying for the night. After checking into our hotel and taking a short break, we headed towards dinner. In order that everyone gets to taste the local dishes of southern Italy we decided to share our dinner rather than ordering individually. It was a wonderful and fun experience, some members of our group remarked that it was very much like a sit-down dinner.
We will be travelling further up north tomorrow to reach Sorrento, where we will be staying with nuns at a convent named Casa La Culla. We are all looking forward to an action-packed next week where we will be visiting the famous site of Pompeii, climbing Mount Vesuvius, and exploring more of mainland Italy!
