To the museum!
Not only does Rome have an impressive history… in conjunction with the reading of the children’s classic ‘Stella volante’ (Flying Star), class 4b spent a few weeks on the subject of ‘Indians’ or rather, as we learned, ‘indigenous tribes’.
What did Christopher Columbus and his successors find on the ‘accidentally discovered’ continent of America, how did they deal with the indigenous people living in advanced civilisations, what did they learn from them, but also how did they oppress them: all this was the subject of a guided tour in the ‘Americas’ section of the large and impressive ‘Museum of Civilisations’ of the E.U.R. in Rome. In the workshop that followed, pupils learnt that many of the foods we consume daily originated on this continent and were brought to Europe by seafarers: for example, cocoa, maize and beans, but also strawberries, chilli peppers and – who would have thought it – even tomatoes, indispensable in Italian cuisine!
