#13 Studying History While Living in It: What has been the largest impact

 Studying History While Living in It: What has been the largest impact

    People have called what we now know as Italy since about 2000 BC. Italy has vast ancient culture from the Romans, to the medieval city states. This makes the history of Italy way more extensive than the history of America. Not to knock America it has amazing history too but Italian history is just way more complex and has so much more to it. I have always been so interested in history so it was surreal to see all of the amazing monuments I have read so much about.

 I feel that history has such a big impact on what we as a society are like today. We need to study history to learn how to be better than the past. For example, many great leaders learned from Julius Cesar and his great Roman Empire. We have copied many ancient Roman techniques in engineering that still work today. Even though some Roman aqueducts are still in use it is such a feat of engineering. We have so much to learn today just by studying past successes and failures.

 Just walking down a street in Arezzo you see medieval buildings then right across the road you see a building built in the Renaissance time period. You see tower homes from the time when Italy was covered with city-states. Every road tells a story, a story of hundreds of years and thousands of people. This is something you don't get in America, every street doesn't tell a historic story. It was just so amazing to be in a place with that much history and I loved every minute of it.

 The largest impact history had on me this trip had to have come in Florence or Rome. Florence was a surreal experience for me. Tales of famous artists walking the streets of Florence and the amazing pieces they created filled my childhood. It was amazing to experience the same streets in person that these artists walked on. In Rome, it was really surreal seeing all the breathtaking monuments. I have spent so much time learning about ancient Roman society it was so amazing to see it all in person. Walking in the Forum that Julius Cesar himself walked in. It was so amazing. I think that is the largest impact just being in the same place as these ancient societies.

Exploring Streets of Arezzo
Streets of Florence
Roman Forum






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