Me in front of St. Peter’s Square, with the obelisk in the background. The pope speaks from around this point for Sunday mass.
Author: Owen Pickett | Major: Civil Engineering | Semester: Summer 2025
This summer, I participated in a thirty-four day long study abroad program at the U of A Rome Center. These five weeks were incredibly significant to me. I have wanted badly to study abroad since I first came to the University, and it was always going to be in Europe if I had the choice. Italy was especially interesting, with its wealth of engineering history and rich culture. I also speak Spanish, which made picking up Italian far easier.
I took two classes at the Rome Center. Even thought I’m not an industrial engineering major, Engineering Economic Development still entailed genuinely useful skills and concepts. Outside of lecture, the class included plenty of outings relevant to the material. These included visits to the Roman Forum, the Colosseum, a travertine quarry in Tivoli, and Interporto, one of Europe’s largest logistics hubs.
The other class was an art lecture, a class whose relevance in Rome hardly needs to be stated. Like Engineering Econ, it also involved many class visits to significant sites for art history throughout Rome. This often involved visiting churches, but also brought us to the Vatican’s archives (in a building that once held the University of Rome), the Pantheon, and museums so full of art that it was difficult not to be overwhelmed.
One of the trips from the program stands alone in my memory. On one of the first weekends of the program, we visited the Vatican City. This tour included the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and of course St. Peter’s Basilica. Covering works by Michelangelo, Bernini, Raphael, the tour communicated well both the scale of the Vatican facility and the sheer amount of breathtaking art in the Catholic Church’s possesion. Then we saw the Basilica with its massive dome, multiple popes’ and saints’ tombs, the spot where Charlemagne was crowned, and so much additional history that it could fill a separate blog. It was the most beautiful building I have ever had the privilege to see.
Beyond Rome, I had the chance to see a wide range of Italian cities. I recommend any who plans to study abroad to do the same. You cannot understand Every city and town I visited- even those with less that twenty thousand people- had a distinct regional identity, accent, cuisine, and architecture. The same is true of many countries in Europe, but seeing it so viscerally was fascinating. I’m also deeply interested in public transit, and the metro, regional, and high-speed trains in Italy were all clean and reliable. Seeing the Italian countryside pass the window at 190 miles per hour is something I’ll remember for a long time.
Altogether, I saw Florence, Bologna, Tivoli, and Orvieto as a part of the program. In many of them, we had a guided tour for at least a portion of the visit. I’m grateful to those who organized these outings, who managed to secure multiple exclusive site visits. I have already mentioned the tour of the travertine quarry in Tivoli, but my favorite of these was the visit to a Hitachi manufacturing plant outside of Florence. The facility produced trains for metros and passenger rail across Europe, including the high-speed Frecciarossa I took to get there. Even beyond that, we had multiple free weekends that allowed me to see Naples, Pompeii, Pisa, and Viterbo on my own time.
The part of my trip that stood out most to me was the chance to live more or less integrated in Rome, and the insight that gave me into the day-to-day life of the Italians around me. I had the chance to experience their coffee, grocery shopping, laundry, and every other part of the typical Italian day. When I was across the ocean from Italy, it barely felt real that millions of people lived in Rome. It even felt that way for a while after arriving. It wasn’t until I stood shoulder to shoulder with them that the truth finally sunk in.