Colle Aventino

Friday night meant a free dinner! The student government paid for 13 people to have dinner at Le Fate (my favorite ristorante) and only 5 showed up, and luckily they invited us to join them because otherwise the money would have been wasted. There were 4 appetizers, 3 types of pasta, and tiramisu for desert. The conversation around the table turned to urban legends and ghost stories and one of them was really disturbing, so obviously I'm going to tell you about it.

The story goes that a girl was studying abroad in Europe and she went with her roommates to a dance club. She hit it off with a local guy and they danced together all night and he invited her back to his apartment for coffee. She told him she would have to check with his roommates, but really she was unsure. Her roommates told her to go, but she decided to leave with them and go back home. The next morning she woke up with a huge bruise and decided to go to the doctor. The doctor told her that he had only seen this kind of bruise once before and it was caused by coming into contact with cadavers. What had been happening was this guy was bringing girls back to his apartment and killing them.

I know this story is supposed to be an urban legend, because no one was actually there or knew the girl and every time its told the city where it was supposed to take place changes, but nevertheless I practically sprinted back to my apartment that night.


The next day we all met to go to Colle Aventino (Aventine Hill). On the way up we passed a statue of a man and no one knew who he was, but someone in the group said he looked like Abraham Lincoln, so naturally I made up a story about how he was Lincoln and that the Italians sent troops over to America during the Civil War. Hopefully no one believed me.

The hill which has a couple churches one of which Santa Sabina, is where Pope Benny XVI got his ashes last Wednesday and where Pope Boniface XIII is buried (He's the guy who helped exile Dante from Florence, so Dante put him in the Inferno), and it also has wooden doors which have carved on them the oldest depiction of Christ. (They look like a giant elaborate Hershey's chocolate bar) On the walls of the church are embedded ruins from older sculptures including a random foot, which reminded me of the plaster mold of the yeti footprint the Destination Truth team found in Nepal. I'd like to think the foot I found might have been from an Ancient Roman yeti. There is a garden filled with orange trees (don't eat the oranges because 1.They're spayed with pesticides and 2. There are guards with very shiny black guns) which has view that overlooks the entirre city. Further up there is a garden that is restricted, but everyone looks through the key hole of the gate because it is in perfect alignment with the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

The other church is on top of what used to be a residence. I think it's called St. Alexis because he stayed there under the family's stairs full on Harry Potter style, and was their servant, then later discovered he was their son. The church was beautiful, but my favorite aspect was the small scale model of it made out of wire. It had markers for the seats that looke like Cheerios and they used thimbles for the bells.


On the way back down the hill we walked past Circus Maximus, which as it turns out is not a circus (I know, I was devastated when I found out), it's where they held the chariot and horse racing in Ancient Rome.