“There is no substitute for seeing things yourself”
...Might as well be our motto. The centerpiece of the ICCS experience is the Ancient City course, in which we visit outstanding Italian and Sicilian sites which loom large in ancient history and literature. Twelve weeks are spent for the most part in Rome and the province of Lazio which surrounds it.
We spend a full week in Sicily and another in Campania. Depending upon the special interests of the faculty, we sometimes take a trip to Ravenna in northern Italy to see its unforgettable early Christian art and architecture.
Rome is the center of our world. However, during the ‘Roman’ weeks of the Ancient City course we also go afield, to important sites like the Etruscan cities of Cerveteri and Tarquinia, the Roman colonies of Cosa or Alba Fucens, to Palestrina and Tivoli, and, of course, to Ostia. Because of its long history and reputation in Italy, the ICCS gets unrivalled access to special sites that most study abroad programs cannot offer.
We spend a week in Sicily. Sicily is one of the most beautiful places in the world, not least for its surviving Greek temples, the second greatest surviving body of them in the world. Here we rub shoulders with Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans, and the delightful Sicilians themselves. As a huge bonus, this trip includes the mainland site of Paestum. And beach time!
Focal visits to Pompeii and Herculaneum are accompanied by trips to Oplontis, Baiae, Cumae, Beneventum, Saepinum, and much more. In the spring we go to Capri. We spend a day and a half in Naples peeling back its many layers, and, of course, the famous Archaeological Museum.
pratt.susan@duke.edu
