The Italian Program at the University of Dallas

We are simultaneously intrigued and horrified at the prospect of this film. What do you think? 😆

In the Hand of Dante | Official Trailer | Netflix In the Hand of Dante follows the parallel lives of a New York autho...

The University of Dallas is one of the most Italophilic universities in the country. What ties us to Rome and to Italy? One of the most obvious links is our Rome campus.

“... Ascanius then, / Now call’d Iulus, shall begin his reign. / He thirty rolling years the crown shall wear, / Then from Lavinium shall the seat transfer, / And, with hard labor, Alba Longa build” (Aeneid, Book One, vv. 267-271).

Upon arriving in Irving, University of Dallas students receive an immediate orientation to the primacy of place. In their first semester, they grapple with Virgil’s epic “Aeneid,” in which they read of Ascanius, son of Aeneas and founder of Alba Longa. Beginning with Livy’s “History of Rome,” some have identified the area near our Rome campus around Lago Albano — that “hill-embosomed lake” near Castel Gandolfo, as Mary Shelley called it in her short story “Sisters of Albano” — as the site of historical Alba Longa. When they get to Rome, our students begin to see the inextricable connection between our curriculum and the physical places of humanity.

There is no way to know with certainty where, or even whether, Alba Longa existed, but that takes nothing away from its very real literary existence, nor does it detract from the mythological strata accumulated in that place over time. Just down the way from Alba Longa and Lago Albano lies the University of Dallas Eugene Constantin Rome Campus, known colloquially as “Due Santi” for its location at an intersection said to have been traversed by both St. Paul and St. Peter. Of this place, University of Dallas alumnus and current Board of Trustees member Daniel Milligan has written that “places have an ability to draw people to them not only because of what may have happened there but also because what happened there is manifestly dependent on that place. Rome is such a place, and Due Santi is ideally positioned to reveal the truths and paradoxes of Rome.”

These two places, these two connections between the University of Dallas and the hills southeast of Rome known as the Colli Albani–the first reflecting the university’s dedication to the Western heritage of liberal education, the second exemplifying its fealty to the magisterium of the Church–do not even begin to exhaust the ties binding the university and the Alban Hills.

IYKYK 😁

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“The night before the exams.”

Are you smarter than an Italian teenager?

Did you know that Italian students have to pass a state exam (known as “l’esame di maturità”) in order to complete the “secondo ciclo” of education?

The “maturità” takes place over two days, but the first day, the “prova d’italiano”, is the most interesting because it is the only one taken by students in all courses of study. More than 500,000 students will take the “prima prova” tomorrow. The second day consists of a “prova” having to do with your particular course of study.

For the “prova d’italiano” in 2025 students received seven “tracce” (prompts) covering three different typologies: literary analysis, an argumentative text, and an expository-argumentative text related to current events. Students choose one of the “tracce” from each typology, and have six hours for their three responses.

Interestingly, recent reforms stipulate that no literary text written prior to 1861 can appear on the “maturità.”

Last year, the literary “tracce” consisted of an untitled poem by Pier Paolo Pasolini and…one of our favorites, a passage from Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa’s “Gattopardo”!

Check out the seven prompts from 2025 and at the site of the Ministry for Education.

https://www.mim.gov.it/documents

Get a load of this! One of the books donated by Dr. Robert Hollander is a first edition (1885) of Rev. H. F. Cary’s translation of Dante’s Inferno, the first canticle of his Commedia. (Full cite: Dante’s Inferno translated by the Reverend Henry Francis Cary, M.A. from the Original of Dante Alighieri and illustrated with the design of Gustave Doré. New edition with Critical and Explanatory Notes, Life of Dante, and Chronology. New York-London-Paris: Cassell and Company Limited, 1885.)

This rather famous translation features Gustave Doré’s 1860 illustration of a portrait of Dante, as well as 75 others by the artist. It’s not super-rare, but it’s rare-ish.

As far as we know from the various inscriptions, this particular copy was given to a young man named George H. Keyes by his mother as a Christmas gift in 1887, before being gifted to the late, great scholar of Dante Dr. Robert Hollander about 100 years later in 1988.

The book needs some TLC (rebinding, mainly), but it’s a neat find, and the reception and transmission history of this copy is a bonus.

Did you know that Italy is home to a sport that is a mashup of soccer, beach volleyball, MMA and UFC, Greco-Roman wrestling, rugby, and the Aztec ballgame “ōllamaliztli”?

That’s right, we are talking about “calcio storico fiorentino,” also known as “calcio in livrea” or “calcio in costume.” It happens only in Florence and features four teams, each of which represents one of the city’s historic neighborhoods.

Yesterday was the second semifinal pitting Santo Spirito against Santa Croce, which the latter won “18 1/2 to 4.” (Santa Maria Novella and Santa Croce will face off on June 24, the feast day of Florence’s patron saint San Giovanni Battista.)

The violent game harks back to the Roman “harpastum” and the “modern” rules were first published in 1580. Goals can be scored by throwing the ball over a designated spot on the perimeter of the field with another goal running the width of the short ends. There is a main referee, six linesmen and a field master. Each game is played out for 50 minutes with the winner being the team with the most points or “cacce” scored.

For what do the teams play? Not money or fame, but simply the glory and honor of representing one’s neighborhood and……..a Chianina cow!

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The Alban Hills and Castelli Romani surrounding the University of Dallas Eugene Constantin Rome campus are home to a surprising number of Roman buildings and other sites of interest.

Did you know that Albano Laziale, just two minutes from our Rome campus, hosts one of the world’s largest extant Roman cisterns, the “Cisternoni,” built under Emperor Septimius Severus between the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD and as large as a five-nave basilica?

The Cisternoni were built to supply the Second Parthian Legion with water, and can hold 10,000 cubic meters of water fed by springs located along the nearby Lago Albano.

The Cisternoni are located just a two-minute drive east of UD’s Rome campus. 💧💧💧

Image credit: Visit Castelli Romani

Happy Feast Day to all Antonios, Anthonys, Antoines, Antonellos, Antonellas et. al! Today is the death anniversary and feast day of honor of St. Anthony of Padova, who, paradoxically, was not named Anthony—at least not at birth—and wasn't from Padova. 🤷‍♂️

The eponymous basilica in Padova is a jewel. There are many parishes in Texas named after St. Anthony of Padova. (Not to mention a certain city!)

For our money, the most beautiful is the minor basilica in Beaumont, Texas, pictured here alongside the basilica in Padova.

In a 2008 lecture at The University of Dallas, the late Dante scholar Dr. Robert Hollander reminded everyone why Princeton University lags behind our own UD. 😁

At the five-minute mark:

“It’s really good to be back at University of Dallas. We were here two years ago and had a really wonderful time. I got back to Princeton and saw my colleague Alban Forcione who is one of the leading Cervantes scholars in the world. And I said, ‘Alban, I suddenly realized how deprived we have been at Princeton all these years. I have just come back from the University of Dallas, and I gave a lecture to about 100 people, and I asked out of curiosity how many people in this room have read Dante? And every single hand went up. And these people have the kind of curriculum we believe in, but don’t have, at Princeton.’ And in fact there are very few places in the world that have the curriculum that you have here. And from what I can see from the last time we were present, you understand that. And you are very happy to be here. And in my view, you should be.”

Full lecture here: https://udallas-ir.tdl.org/items/4ba63937-cabd-4bd8-b2ed-c3e51c21234d