Katya Rutherford~Our Western Heritage~

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Sistine Chapel

The Sistine chapel was started by Pope Sixtus 4th in 1473. This building was created during an important time in western history that we know as the Renaissance. This period was known for its rebirth of ideas, art, and culture of the Greco-Roman period. Even though it won’t be till later in the 1500s that this building will finally be finished, one of the greatest and most well-known artists of the Renaissance, Michelangelo, will have his art displayed on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.

Today and since 1942, the Sistine Chapel has been used as the place where the cardinals come together to decide who will be the next pope. The Sistine Chapel is part of the Vatican City museum that people can visit today. This is a very protected place to preserve the ancient art of the great artist Michelangelo who was one of the first people to make a painting look realistic. He was a true artist and his works captured the beauty of humanism that the Renaissance represented.

In Florence, Alabama where I attended high school, there is a Renaissance Faire every year to remember the great achievements, ideas, and art that came about during the Renaissance in Florence, Italy. Although I’ve never actually attended this Renaissance Faire, I heard and learned a lot about this period by going to school in Florence. I had classmates who would enter the art contest and display their artistic abilities in honor of this period. Even though I never entered the contest, my art teacher encouraged our whole class to draw our version of Michelangelo’s painting The Creation of Adam. It’s really neat to look back on this drawing knowing that I was able to see it with my own eyes.

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Leaning- Tower of Pisa

The leaning tower of Pisa is most likely one of the most famous sites in Italy. People come from all over just to take a picture of this building in the middle of a paper town and then hop on a train to their next destination. Do most of these people even know the significance of this place? Maybe they do but my guess is most of them don’t.

From 1173 to 1399, the tower of Pisa was constructed. It took around 300 years to build due to the interruption of wars. Historians say that it wouldn’t have been for these interruptions while building and instead it was constructed all at once, then the tower would have most likely fallen during this process. This structure was known during these early centuries for being the church bell tower.

More than 5 million people come to visit this massive leaning structure annually. Some may come just to take pictures of a historic landmark. While others may come to admire a piece of architecture from the medieval ages. People may come for different reasons, but it would be hard to see a structure like this and not admire or appreciate its style and engineering that went into building a structure like this.

The biggest connection that I have made between what I have learned up into this point in our class and to the leaning tower of Pisa is the growth of religion during times of war and hopelessness. The reason for the slow process of this structure was because of the interruptions during a time of war. It seems that in times of hopelessness people seem to look to a higher being and build structures in honor of them. Many people became drawn to this place even from the beginning of the tower’s construction.

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Cologne Cathedral

This massive structure caught my eye before I stepped foot out of the train station in Cologne. Its enormous and intricate design was something that you couldn’t help but notice and appreciate. Looking at this massive building I was awestruck of how many designs were carved and placed in this structure. One of my thoughts was, “how would someone even begin something like this?” and also, “how much time must this have taken someone to make?” I have to say, something as detailed and tall took serious dedication and true belief in something much bigger than themselves.

This huge cathedral started in 1248. In the past, churches were places where people could feel at peace from ongoing wars that they were fighting. When people didn’t have hope in anything else life could offer, they put their hope in God by giving in indulgences so that they would have security in their salvation. This money went to funding these cathedrals, so they could be built. In this building, there are pieces of art that date back to 1182 and 1200. The shrine is an example of this masterpiece. In 1164, this cathedral became a huge sot for pilgrimage and had to be fixed. During the 16th century, the work on this building stopped due to a lack of money to continue this project. It wasn’t until around 300 years later that reconstruction started up again. This building was built to honor St. Peter and the Virgin Mary.

The Cologne cathedral church is the largest cathedral in northern Europe. There is a lot of older art in this building but there is also newer art like a stained-glass window that was finished in 2007. Today this Cathedral is one of Germany’s most famous landmarks. Today this is not only a place for Catholics to worship but also a place of site-seeing something created in the past.

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The Ruins of Pompeii and Mount Vesuvius

Imagine growing up in a small community where your normal was to wake up bright and early to go work in the vineyards with your friends and family. As you are working, you hear the children playing, birds chirping, palm trees rustling in the wind and the faint rumble of the volcano in the distance, as you would hear occasionally. As you continue working, you notice that faint rumble in the distance gets louder and louder. You stop working and look around at others working in the vineyard when you sense something is wrong.

This is how I imagine it was like on the day when the city of Pompeii was destroyed. When I went to visit Pompeii, sadly I didn’t know much more about it other than the song by Bastille. This city was home to thousands upon thousands of men, women, and children. It was an ancient civilization that was under the rule of the Roman Empire. Pompeii became a very well known city to the wealthy and important people in society partly due to it being so close to the beautiful shoreline. This was a place full of life. In the early years before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, you would see people making pottery, working in the gardens or vineyards, the wealthy people talking at the bathhouses and even visitors coming to see the beautiful city of Naples.

Today, people don’t visit the city of Pompeii to buy pottery or see where the wealthy people in society hangout, but they come to reminisce about the civilization that was once great and is now no more. However, many people may not know that this city was once completely covered in ashes and by doing this it preserved many artifacts that were later uncovered by archaeologists. Today, one can visit the ruins and think about what their life was like in the early first century. It’s amazing to see parts of houses, a church, statues, pottery, an amphitheater and even people that remain after this volcanic ash covered the whole civilization.

The reason I picked this topic was that it was something that I knew little about, yet it was something both beautiful and sobering to see. Learning more about how this city was completely covered in ash, rediscovered a thousand years later by digging up its remains, and it still is beautiful with its pottery, different colored rock walls, and paintings that remained in houses makes it even more intriguing to me. It was sobering to see such an important city full of life to be wiped out by a natural disaster and even more sobering seeing the petrified remains of the ones that had lost their lives left in dust and ash.

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The Roman Coliseum

The Coliseum in Rome is an arena built by the Romans in the early century. People would come from all over mainly to watch the gladiator games which were played there. The neat thing about this place was that everyone, from the richest to the poorest, could attend these events. It would be like a concert today, but you didn’t have to pay to go see it. Although everyone was able to attend, not everyone was able to sit in the seat of their choice. The wealthiest had the closest and best seats in the coliseum yet the poor sat in the nosebleeds. For the Romans, this was a place of entertainment aside from their busy Roman life. However, this wasn’t a place of enjoyment for everyone. To Christians, this was a place where many would be killed out of martyrdom for their beliefs. Even today, this is a place that Christians look to and can remember how harshly people of the Christian faith would be persecuted for the same faith in the God and Savior that we worship even today. To others today, this is a reminder of the powerful and great Roman Empire that once covered almost all of Europe, some of northern Africa and even parts of Asia connected to the Mediterranean Sea. This coliseum is known for being the largest amphitheater ever built and it is widely visited because of this. The reason I picked the Coliseum to write about is because of the example that Christians in the early century set for Christians today. By their actions, they showed that there was nothing on this earth more important than following God’s will. They showed this by going as far as giving up their lives in faith and service to God. Today, we say that we should be willing to die for our faith but these Christians that were persecuted here literally died for proclaiming their belief in God. Their boldness is not only inspiring but also challenging to me.

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Verviers, Belgium

Strolling through the streets in Europe with some of your best friends is a dream come true. To be honest, I never thought that I would ever be this adventurous to stay away from home for three months traveling in a foreign county. So far, I’m glad that I took this opportunity to grow closer to friends, meet to new faces, and see God’s beautiful creations.

*This picture was taken our second day in front of the train station at Verviers-Central.