An excited group of our Year 8 students departed for Europe on Tuesday. This remarkable Renaissance Tour is unique to Ficino School. The students, teachers and parents will travel first to Rome, where they will visit the Pantheon, built in the first century AD, the Colosseum and St Peters Basilica, including the Sistine Chapel painted by Michaelangelo. Their next stop is Orvieto, a hilltop Etruscan town accessed by a funicular railway, before heading on to Siena and Florence to experience the heart of the Italian Renaissance.
The second half of the tour takes place in London and the southwest of England. There was a lesser-known renaissance taking place in Britain which culminated in the building of the great cathedrals. The students will visit Salisbury Cathedral which houses one of four original copies of the famous Magna Carta; the foundation of our legal system here in New Zealand. Nearby is Stonehenge, thought to have been built over 5000 years ago. They will also explore the spa town of Bath which marks the outer extent of the Roman Empire, before visiting Oxford University. The trip culminates in London with a performance of Twelfth Night at the Globe Theatre, as well as tours to Westminster Abbey, where kings and queens are crowned and St Pauls Cathedral, which was designed by Sir Christopher Wren.
Renaissance literally means ‘rebirth’ and it was the rediscovery of the wisdom of Ancient Greece that precipitated the flowering of art in Florence during the 15th and 16th centuries. The Italian Renaissance was a time when humanism came to the fore, and Marsilio Ficino was one of the leading lights of this movement. He translated all the works of the Greek philosopher Plato which heavily influenced artists like Michelangelo, Botticelli and Leonardo Da Vinci.
This trip is an extraordinary opportunity for our students in their final year to connect with the greatness of the people, the architecture and the art that aimed at the highest ideals of human experience. The opportunity to connect with both the ancient world and its newer expression gives our students a rare perspective that they will take with them for the rest of their lives.
Thank you to Mr Hudson for all the preparatory work, and to all our sponsors who have helped to make this trip possible, especially the Education Renaissance Trust, who helped ensure as many students as possible could go.
