Morgan's Mythology Blog: The Getty Villa Trip

I know that you are all anxiously awaiting the god and goddess personal profile that I promised in my last post. However, before I start them, I wanted to write about my trip to the Getty Villa in Malibu,Calfornia. This past summer, my mom and I visited her friend and her daughter who were in Hollywood,CA for a few weeks. I remembered that my teacher had previously mentioned the Getty,and I was anxious to visit it.

The Getty Center is nestled in the hills of the Santa Monica mountains. All of the land that the Getty Center and the Getty Villa is located upon was once owned by J.Paul Getty. I also enjoyed visiting the Getty Art Center,but my favorite,of course, was visiting the Roman
Villa. After you reach the top of the driveway, you are immediately greeted by a spectacular view of the Pacific Ocean. The villa,which is part of the J.Paul Getty Museum, is a full scale replica of a Roman villa and garden. It was constructed in the early 1970s after J.Paul's collection of Roman and Greek artifacts was too large for his current exhibition center. Getty was always facinated with these type of artifacts. He even, at his own expense, sent down crews of men to Pompeii,Herculaneum,and other ancient cities to bring back ancient treasures.

I was amazed at how much the museum mimicked the pictures of a real Roman villa in our Cambridge Latin books. It was like I just stepped into Caecilius' house! I shouldn't have been surprised,however, because it was modeled after the Villa de Papiri, a 1st century Roman house. The real villa was located in Herculaneum,Italy and was buried by Mt.Vesuvious in AD79. Most of it is still being excavated, so they had to model parts of the Getty Villa after other villas in Pompeii and Herculaneum. The villa is a museum where there are many different artifacts in each room. For example, where the bedrooms would be there is an exhibit of the twelve Olympians. I just loved walking though each of the rooms, fully apreciating its importance... They even had a"cave canem" mosaic in the entrance!

The outside has Roman influence too. There is a spectacular open-air Pavilion which leads to the 450 seat classical theatre,based on ancient prototypes.

One of my favorite parts was touring through the gardens. It was a perfect summer day for strolling around the grounds. My friend, who hasn't taking latin or greek and was fairly bored watching me run from room to room shrieking with delight upon seeing a Pompeiin cooking pot, found one thing of common interest- we both loved the lamb's ear plant. Now that I look back upon it, we must have looked pretty silly. Here we have two teenaged girls,skipping through the gardens, petting the lamb's ear. Hey,this is Malibu. No one from my school is going to see me acting like this...I hope. Anyway, the gardens were filled with trees,herbs,and flowers which were all used by the Romans. The herb garden was amazing also. There were,of course,herbs. However, there were also fruit trees,annuals,and perennials. All of these plants were used by the ancient Romans in their cooking,ceremonies,and medicine. I'm not sure what the lamb's ear is used for,but hey, now I'll have to go back to Malibu and ask.