Eleven students enrolled in Latin II or higher level Latin courses went on a school sponsored trip to Rome April 3-10 to gain a deeper understanding of Latin texts.

Latin teacher Mercedes Barletta said the idea for the trip came from a joke that her students made about visiting Greece to see an oracle.

“Once we stopped laughing about the fantasy of journeying abroad and realized we could actually do a trip, [we] decided that what we really wanted was to visit Rome,” Barletta said.

In Rome, students visited sites such as the Baths at Carcalla, the Borghese Gallery and the Colosseum. At some sites, students gathered to read texts written in the time of the Ancient Romans in or near the places where they were written.

“[The trip] was a fantastic enrichment opportunity for Latin students,” Barletta said. “It provided students with a way to read original texts about the places we were visiting written by authors living during the height of the ancient Roman world.”

Esther Grover ’19 said she was glad to go on a trip because Latin students do not have as many opportunities to go on immersion trips as students taking modern languages such as Spanish or French.

“Latin isn’t spoken anymore, but getting to visit a city so rich with the history of the society from which Latin came helped me further appreciate the language I’ve chosen to study,” Grover said.