42 Bethelites Tour Italy

Forty-two students, parents, teachers and friends from the Bethel area toured Italy April 11-19, enjoying the country’s historical and cultural sights.

The group, organized by Whitcomb High Latin teacher Cynthia Wilson, visited Venice, Florence, Rome and Pompeii. Art teacher Wendy Wells and history teacher Betty De Simone joined Wilson as co-leaders of the tour.

In Venice, they enjoyed walking along Venetian pathways and over the many bridges spanning the city's network of canals. They marveled at the sights, like St. Mark's Square, St. Mark's Basilica and the Doge's palace, all dating at least as far back as the Renaissance, when Venice was an important center of western culture. Of course, everyone also took the opportunity to go on a gondola ride.

The next stop was Florence. The group toured the Uffizi, one of the great art museums of the world, where they saw paintings by such old masters as Leonardo Da Vinci. Later they admired a number of statues by Michelangelo.

"The art of Florence is like nothing I've ever seen before," said Whitcomb High School student Gretchen Williams, an enthusiastic participant in the tour. "It's so lovely and unique that it simply cannot be reproduced adequately."

Rome was next, where the Bethelites got to see one of the most imposing buildings in Europe, the Church Saint Peter, as well as the Vatican museums and the Sistine Chapel, whose painted ceiling--one of the great artistic wonders of the world--has recently been restored to its original vibrant colors.

Those interested in ancient history enjoyed a tour of the Roman Forum, which in ancient times was the administrative and political center of the Roman Empire, and they also marveled at the Coliseum nearby. Undoubtedly some of Whitcomb's Latin students were able to try their hand at deciphering the ancient inscriptions.

The group saw even more relics of the ancient world when they ended their Italian tour in the shadow of the volcano Mount Vesuvius. They toured the ruins of the ancient Roman town of Pompeii, preserved under ashes and lava for almost 2,000 years after Vesuvius erupted in the first century. The experience had special meaning for the Whitcomb Latin students, because the Latin book they used in their course was set fictitiously in Pompeii itself.

According to Wilson, the purpose of the tour was to give Bethel students some exposure to three of the academic disciplines being taught at Whitcomb---the classics, art, and history. It would seem that they couldn't have done that in a better place than Italy.

By Chris Costanzo