Here We Go...

Two cities.  Four weeks.  Fifteen students.  This is going to be great!

In a couple of days I'm heading to Italy, leading my first study abroad course.  We're following in the footsteps of Galileo Galilei, the mathematician and astronomer whose clash with the Catholic Church remains one of the best-known events in the history of Western science.  We start in Florence, where Galileo lived for many years and also where, well over a century before him, the Renaissance first took shape.  We'll visit the house where Galileo was confined following his trial in front of the Inquisition, and his ornate tomb in the church of Santa Croce; we'll see one of his fingers, preserved in a reliquary, next to the telescope lens through which he became the first person to observe the moons of Jupiter; and we'll visit the palaces and gardens of the powerful Medici family, who helped to shape the Renaissance and who later became Galileo's patrons and protectors. 

Traveling to Rome, we'll have a chance to consider why Galileo clashed with the Church, and what exactly was at stake in his claims that the Earth moved around the sun.  We'll visit the very spot in Rome where he first demonstrated his telescope to a collection of cardinals and virtuosi, as well as the observatory at the Collegio Romano where Jesuit priests tried either to prove or refute Galileo's heretical claims.  Later, we'll see the actual recantation that Galileo signed in 1633 after his trial came to a close, and we'll retrace the route taken by Dan Brown's characters in his Angels and Demons as we consider why the mythology of Galileo remains so powerful today.

It's going to be a whirlwind, but I can't wait to introduce my students to this history as well as to everything Italy has to offer.  When I can, I'll post updates and photos here.  Stay tuned!