Submitted by Allison Andreola on the 2017 spring semester program in Rome, Italy…
One of my favorite classes that I’m taking at school here is a sociology class called Rome: Modern City. It’s an on-site class, so we spend each class in a different location around the city and learn about the sociological significance of different neighborhoods and monuments and how Rome is changing over the years. This week, we visited the Roman Forum. I learned so much about the history of the Roman Forum beyond what you learn as a tourist visiting the site. According to my professor when the Forum was resurfaced in the early 1900’s, the government, under Mussolini, was trying to build more of a national identity similar to the leader of the Roman Empire. The government demolished everything built on and around the Forum, including thousands of people’s homes, in order to open the Forum to the public. These people were forcefully relocated to “Borgate,” which were essentially the projects of Rome. The Forum is seen today as the “heart of Rome.” However, the Forum as we know it today only exists at the cost of thousands of people. I now have a new perspective on the ancient monuments of Rome and am interested to see what else I will learn over the course of this class.