Southern Trip: Paestum, Italia

11.08.2008

Paestum, Italy

Our southern field trip began early Saturday morning, when we left Rome by bus. On this trip were the 22 of us, both of our professors (D.Bell and Cinzia), a RISD art professor named Tom, and his wife Susan. We’d gone to a lecture of his a few weeks ago, and he’s a good friend of Cinzia’s. A few hours after leaving Rome, we got off the bus in Paestum. The town itself is pretty small and seemed a bit plain, but our main attractions were the three ancient Greek temples on the outskirts. They were all made between 530-450 BC when there were Greeks living in the area. Two were dedicated to Hera (now named Hera I and Hera II, how clever), and the third was dedicated to Athena (Hera I, Athena, then Hera II chronologically). We didn’t have a ton of time to explore the temples, only about an hour, but we got some sketching done and had fun exploring. Part of our assignment from D.Bell was to sketch each of the Doric orders of the temples, because although they were all technically Doric, they were still slightly different. I did that, then hopped the fence with a few other people and clambered around Hera I illegally. We took some sweet pictures, but then got paranoid about getting caught and headed out.

We met as a group and headed down to the town’s museum, which had lots of old tomb frescoes from the same era. We saw “The Diver”, which is a very beautiful, simple fresco. We spent some time drawing. Cinzia wanted us to learn from the simple line drawings and the nice balance of all of the compositions. I did some drawings with my left hand, and then some with both left and right that were blind (where I didn’t look at the page). It was a good exercise; they came out horribly (obviously), but I had fun.

We then drove a little ways (not far, maybe 15-20 minutes) to a buffalo farm. The area is known for its buffalo mozzarella, so our meal was on the program, which was great. Before eating we walked around a bit and pet the buffalo, both fully grown and calves. They were adorable, but they reeked to high heaven. Our plates came with delicious sourdough bread (nothing like in the states, but still good), some greens, a few balls of mozzarella, ricotta, and some type of hard cheese that I couldn’t place. Normally I’ll eat ricotta if it’s in a dish, but don’t care too much for it by itself, but this was phenomenal. The mozzarella and other cheese were also delicious. Cinzia kept telling us that we would never want to eat mozzarella again because it would never be this good, and it’s true! They also brought out some buffalo salami, but Rachel and I steered clear (we were sitting with Jeff and Liz as well). We all totally stuffed our faces, but managed to save room for buffalo gelato afterwards. I went the traditional route and got chocolate and strawberry, and they were both tasty. They didn’t taste too different than regular gelato, but were a bit thicker. Liz was a bit more adventurous and got pear ricotta, which I would have loved to get, but didn’t know what to pair it with…it was delicious, though. She and I also bought little jars of buffalo pudding (she got dark and I got white chocolate) and put them in the mini fridge on the bus. The sad part of the story is that when we got back to Rome, we accidentally left them on the bus! Quite upsetting.

We hopped back on the bus once again and set off for Matera. Next entry!

PICTURES: what remains of Hera II, and some of the baby buffalo (bufallettes, we deemed them)