page_title: Nationality Rooms
section_title: Italian
hierarchical_section_title: Nationality Rooms / Classrooms / Italian
caption_attribution_description: English: Italian Nationality Room in the Cathedral of Learning at the University of Pittsburgh This is an image of a place or building that is listed on the National Register of Historic Places in the United States of America. Its reference number is 75001608 More images
context_page_description: The Nationality Rooms are a collection of 31 classrooms in the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning depicting and donated by the national and ethnic groups that helped build the city of Pittsburgh. The rooms are designated as a Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation historical landmark and are located on the 1st and 3rd floors of the Cathedral of Learning, itself a national historic landmark, on the University of Pittsburgh's main campus in the Oakland neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Although of museum caliber, 29 of the 31 rooms are regularly used as functional classrooms that are utilized daily by University of Pittsburgh faculty and students, while the other two are mostly used as display rooms viewed through glass doors and are otherwise utilized primarily for special events and can only be explored via special guided tour. The Nationality Rooms also serve in a vigorous program of intercultural involvement and exchange in which the original organizing committees for the individual rooms remain as participants and includes a program of annual student scholarship to facilitate study abroad.
context_section_description: The Italian Classroom reflects the serenity of a 15th-century Tuscan monastery, with its traditional devotion to religion, art, music, and education. The rear choir stall bench and shuttered windows introduce the monastic theme. The blackboard doors recall an armadio, a cabinet behind an altar used to hold priestly vestments. The turquoise soffitto a cassettoni (coffered ceiling), embellished with carved, gold-leafed rosettes, was inspired by one originally in the San Domenico Convent at Pesaro. In the architrave, names of famous Italians are inlaid in olive wood. The lettering resembles that used in the inscription on the Arch of Titus in Rome. Bay benches are cushioned in red velvet. The red tile floor is set in a herring-bone pattern similar to that of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio. An original Florentine fireplace, made of sandstone from the quarries of Fiesole, bears the carved Latin inscription, "O Lord, do not forsake me." On either side stand Savonarola chairs. Monastery bench designs, adapted for student use, are carved with names and founding dates of Italian universities. The oldest is the University of Bologna, established in 1088. From the front of the room, a bronze bust of Dante Alighieri faces Giovanni Romagnoli's mural of Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia, the first woman in the world to achieve a university degree when she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1678  by the University of Padua.
caption: The Italian Classroom
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