Our junior and senior classes have just returned from twelve days in Greece and Italy. Some schools would call it a junior-senior trip; we call it the Classical Heritage Tour. On a Trinitas aesthetics trip the main mission is to discover beauty that we can’t discover at home. For twenty years, these trips were to New York City and Washington DC on alternating years, but now, for the first time, Trinitas students were able to travel abroad and experience the music, dance, art, architecture, and food that has been foundational to their classical education.
On the first night in Athens, the students enjoyed a leisurely stroll through the Agora under the shadow of the beautifully lit Parthenon perched atop the towering Acropolis. The first full day in Athens began at the National Archaeological Museum which laid the foundation for everything we experienced while in Greece. From there, we took a bus to Cape Sounion where the ruins of the Temple of Poseidon are in good condition and are surrounded by great views of the Aegean Sea. The following day was spent touring both the ruins and the museum in Delphia. Everyone agreed we could have spent more time in Greece, but the wonders of Rome awaited us!
Few places offer the aesthetic satisfaction of an art museum, and we visited several of them on this trip to Rome. From ancient to classical to Renaissance sculpture and painting, some of the world’s most beautiful and famous art was available to us in the Capitoline, Borghese, and Vatican Museums. The students were well prepared for what they saw because they have been researching many of the most notable works and presenting their findings in class for several months. Bus rides included group discussions about the works we had seen that day or how a philosophy of aesthetics fits into the Christian worldview.
Though it is impossible to fit all of the wonders of Rome in a week, we certainly tried! Students marveled at the Campus Martius, the Pantheon, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Piazza Navona, and the Spanish Steps. Later days included the Ara Pacis, Roman Forum, Palatine Hill, Colosseum, and San Clemente Church.
We took a day trip to Florence and toured the Uffizi Gallery before climbing the Duomo. Another day trip took the group to Pompeii where we walked the ruins before going into Naples for an afternoon at the Archaeological Museum.
We worshipped with other Christians from around the world on Palm Sunday before spending the afternoon with Bernini's sculptures and attending a magnificent performance of Bach's St. Matthew's Passion in German at St. Paul's Within the Walls.
Although the days were long and we certainly "got our steps in," the evenings were marked with wonderful late-night meals often served family-style with multiple courses. Everyone agreed that the meals were a true highlight of this remarkable trip.
If this doesn’t sound like a normal junior-senior trip, it is because the aim of the Classical Heritage Tour is to expose students to once-in-a-lifetime aesthetic experiences while providing a capstone experience to the classical, Christ-centered education they have received at Trinitas. Sure, we have opera and museums and architecture and great food in Pensacola, but this trip gives our students a wider view of the world. Students can get pop-culture and pop-music and cheap food anywhere; this trip is about giving them what they don’t have readily available to them every day. We are grateful that our students had this opportunity and already planning for the 2026 Classical Heritage Tour!
