The Villa Gulia and the Etruscan Museum

On the afternoon following a visit to the Protestant Cemetery, I, along with Mark, Elyssa, Sarah Donovan, Damaris, and Emily Sater accompanied Sarah Britenfeld on a solo excursion to the Villa Guilia.  After taking a metro to the Piazza del Popollo and walking to what appeared to be the outskirts of the city, we arrived at the spectacular Villa.  I must say I was unexpectedly pleased to encounter such a beautiful and serene site based off our location in the city.  My first impression of the Villa Guilia was that it is extremely well-preserved.  Unlike many of the ancient places that we have encountered during our stay in Rome, the villa’s architecture remains almost entirely intact.  Built by Pope Julius III in the mid-1500s and now home to the Museo Nazionale Etrusco, the Villa is characterized by its sweeping green lawns, well-maintained gardens, and architecture that emphasizes a sense of symmetry and order.

 

Though our primary purpose in seeing the Villa Guilia was to tour the collection of Etruscan museum and see the artifacts that it houses, I could not stop myself from wandering the grounds of estate for a long time.  Every hedge, tree, and flower in the gardens surrounding the building seemed to be perfectly placed as part of some beautifully symmetrical decorating scheme.  I sat down on a bench near the temple and spent some time just listening to the sound of birds singing, looking at the roses that created splashes of color in the otherwise green garden, and taking in the gorgeous day.  I felt so at peace that I had to resist the urge to stretch out on my bench and take a nap in the sun.  As I began to write the thoughts that flooded my head into my journal, I could not get the idea out of my head that the Villa Guilia must have been designed to create a space where one might find peace of mind.  I continued wandering the grounds and found some interesting sculptures and mosaics behind the Villa.  Even the statues, lounging on their stone pedestals in a very relaxed fashion, seemed at peace, and emphasized the sense of serenity I felt from seeing the temple and the beautifully laid out gardens. I wish I could say that I enjoyed the Etruscan art exhibit as much as I enjoyed meandering through the grounds of the Villa, but I found the museum—although fascinating—to be somewhat cold and uninviting after spending so much time in the gardens. 

The first exhibit I saw upon entering the museum was the “Sarcofogo delgi Spousi”—a beautiful terracotta sarcophagus that features a man and woman in a warm embrace.  Other items in the museum included intricately painted vases, ancient tools and eating utensils, and other terracotta pieces.  Out of all the artifacts in the museum, I found myself drawn to the displays of various kind of jewelry that would have been worn by Etruscan women in the 8^th century.  The plaque next to these displays noted that these women were buried with the bobbles that adorned their clothes and bodies, just as men were buried with their swords and other forms of weaponry.  I believe I was drawn to this particular part of the exhibit because seeing something that these women actually wore seemed far more personal than seeing a bowl they may have eaten from or a water vase they might have drank from.  I felt connected to these artifacts because they made me think about the kinds of personal items that will define my time on earth.