Studying abroad in Rome is a requirement of the School of Architecture at the University of Notre Dame. Every student spends their entire third year living and studying in the city, with exploration trips throughout Italy. I arrived in September 2010 and stayed through April 2011.

We lived in a hotel just off Campo de’ Fiori, with our studio space a short walk away near the Pantheon. Our days were structured around design studio. These are long afternoons spent drawing, designing, and refining ideas, and the rest of the time belonged to studying the city. Rome is a place I experienced entirely on foot.

I visited the places most people come to see such as the Spanish Steps, the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, but what stayed with me were the rhythms of daily life. Walking through Trastevere in the evenings. Sitting in quiet piazzas. Returning again and again to Sant’Ivo alla Sapienza and the Janiculum Hill.

We studied the city by drawing buildings we had only seen in textbooks, including Villa Rotonda. In the fall, we traveled through northern Italy—Venice, Florence, Siena, Vicenza. In the spring, we traveled south to Naples, Pompeii, and Sicily, among others.

Friday nights were often spent at a small restaurant in Trastevere enjoying dinner with friends. Weekends were for traveling to other countries or walking to neighborhood shops for laundry soap and painting supplies. There was an international grocery store which carried foods from around Europe and some from the US which were exorbitantly priced but comforting.

My parents visited over Christmas. A snowstorm almost derailed our plans to visit Florence and Assisi. We attended mass at St Peter’s Basilica and saw the Pope.

By the end of the year, Rome had reshaped how I wanted to live. I learned to value walkability, to prioritize relationships over productivity, to build a life which feels good day to day. This year remains the most formative of my life so far.