When he arrived in Rome in 1786, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe found himself moved to the core. Rome was far removed from his day-to-day political worries in Weimar, Germany. It served as a Mediterranean vacation that Goethe didn’t realize he needed, and put the poet-philosopher in touch with antiquity.
Having received an education in Greek and Latin literature in the university towns of Germany, Goethe (1749-1832) mostly thought of the ancient world on the page, in the abstract, or saw it through the prints and paintings of Rome that dotted his childhood home. Going to Rome in his middle age changed all that. His connection to the ancient monuments like the Colosseum, the Forum, and the Pantheon was immediate: Goethe was occupying the same spaces that the ancient Romans had, walking in the ancients’ steps.
