This June, 23 Friends Select students and 3 teachers will travel to Rome and Sorrento, Italy. This trip is replacing the intersession related trips FSS has typically held at the beginning of each summer.

Students and teachers will depart from Philadelphia on June 8th and return the 18th. First, in Rome, they will visit the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, sights along the River Tiber, the Ara Pacis Augustae, the Mausoleum of Augustus, the Vatican Museum, the Colosseum, the Imperial fora and Palatine Hill, the Domus Aurea of Nero, the Villa Borghese, and a small harbor town. Then, in Sorrento, they will visit the villa of Emperor Tiberius at Sperlonga, Naples, Pompeii, and Mt. Vesuvius.

Ian Lockey, Friend Select’s upper school Latin teacher, helped plan the trip. “I chose Italy because it is a place I know a lot about and I wanted to share these great sites with students,” he said. While many topics from upper-level latin courses will be explored during this trip, “students don’t need to be in Latin class to come on the trip.”

Matthew D’Annunzio, a senior, is one of the students going on the trip. He went on the intersession trip to China last year, and is excited for Italy this year, a country he has “previously been to and loved.” He sees this trip as “a sendoff after graduation”, where he can “enjoy one last Friends Select experience” before leaving for college.

However, recent travel to Italy has been affected by their major coronavirus outbreak. Friends Select’s Ireland exchange trip was cancelled due to concerns surrounding the virus. It has not yet been determined whether the  trip to Italy will be affected by Covid-19 related travel restrictions.