Students follow in the footsteps of the Ancient Greeks, the Ancient Romans, and the Early Christians.
The students spent one week in Calabria, Sicily, and Malta during their one month study-abroad program in Rome, Italy.
School President Richard Greco, Jr. accompanied the students on a one-week archeological, cultural, linguistic, historic, and religious itinerary.
Stops included:
The National Museum of Magna Graecia in Reggio, Calabria to see the famed Bronzes of Riace, the most exquisite examples of classical Greek sculpture (https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/ancient-art-civilizations/greek-art/early-classical/a/riace-warriors)
The Greek Amphitheater in Taormina, Sicily http://www.teatrogrecotaormina.com/concerts/events.html
The Roman Villa at Piazza Armerina in Sicily with the most intact examples of Roman mosaics extant in the world, also a UNESCO world heritage site (http://www.italia.it/en/travel-ideas/unesco-world-heritage-sites/piazza-armerina-the-villa-romana.html)
The Valley of the Temples in Agrigento, the most famous examples of Greek temple architecture (http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/831/gallery/), also a UNESCO world heritage site
Malta, with visits to the site of St. Paul’s shipwreck and Ulysses’s famed landing on Calypso. St. Paul stayed in Malta for 3 months before landing in Syracuse Sicily followed by Reggio, Calabria, on his way to Rome. (http://www.visitmalta.com/en/st-paul-in-malta)
The students used John Stoddard’s travelogue of Sicily and Malta from the early 1900s as their guide.
School President Richard Greco commented, “What an incredible experience for our students to walk in the same footsteps as the ancient Greeks, Romans, and early Christians. What a foundational itinerary in Western civilization to touch, see, feel, and understand the lasting gifts of the Greeks, who contributed the concept of the ideal—and therefore the concept that truth exists—married with the truths of salvation of our Catholic faith as preached by St. Paul. The excursion made real in an indescribable way their whole Montfort educational experience of Latin, Greek, religion, philosophy, history, ethics, civics, debate, rhetoric, chivalry, ancient literature, and much, much, more.”