Best day ever - part I

What a lucky day I had today. First, after getting lost for the 100th time I arrived at a rarely visited Roman/Samnite ancient city as per the suggestion of my hostess at the B&B. As I walked along wondering what all of this was I met a tour group mostly from Boston who were just about to sit down under a large maple tree for lunch. The man leading the tour just happened to be a professor of archeology from, get this MIT! From the sound of him I guessed he might also do voice overs for Woody Allen. The group was made up mostly of teachers from the Boston area who are interested in archeology and a few of his graduate students, one of whom also studied Latin and he did some translating of the writing on the walls. I learned so much and felt very lucky and impressed with the amount of knowledge surrounding me.

Next, as we were touring one of the men trimming the trees nearby watched us from a distance for about ten minutes. He seemed very interested in what we were doing and the fact that we weren't speaking Italian yet still interested in this site. He started to talk to us in Italian and broken English and then asked us if we wanted to see the weapons of war museum. He specialized in the study of some of the artifacts at the museum. The museum in an old medieval farmhouse had been around sInce the 70's but no one typically sees this because they don't have the ability to pay anyone to staff the museum (see photos). Over the last few decades experts have been reconstructing several ancient catapults and something similar to giant crossbows. These recreations were done using what was depicted on the walls of various archeological sites throughout Italy. It was very impressive and quite a shame that these artifacts are stored in a museum that few people get to see.