Katie's Italian Adventure: Ardeatine Caves

I have just a quick update for you this time… Yesterday I had my drawing class and we went to the Ardeatine Caves to draw earth. This was by far my favorite site so far. It was out in the Catacombs and it is a site with a terrible history, but a beautiful monument. On this site over 300 Italians were massacred during WWII; some were Jews, some were prisoners, and some were just plain old citizens that the Nazis picked up off the streets one day. The massacre took place because a small group of Italian citizens set off bombs on German soldiers who were walking by on day. Hitler was so upset about this that he ordered 10 Italians to be killed for every one German that was killed by the bomb. He wanted it done by a certain night and since the Nazis couldn’t find enough prisoners, they brought with Jews and random citizens to make sure that they had enough people for the massacre. They took them out to the site and they were all killed inside the cave and they set off explosives afterwards to hide the site. It was discovered later and the victims were all properly buried in a memorial right by the cave. It was really amazing to see a Holocaust site in Europe, because it is evident how much the war still affects a large part of the population here. There were still so many fresh flowers by the graves even though it seems like the event took place a long time ago.

Inside the Memorial

Today, I had my Roman history walking tour and our teacher took us all over the city for 3.5 hours. She took us to the Pantheon and a bunch of columns and the Church of Santa Maria, which was my favorite. It is one of very few gothic churches in Rome and it is absolutely beautiful.