Le Corbusier, the famous French architect who heralded the new Internationalist style and worked on or influenced countless projects in housing, religion, urban planning and politics, including the UN Headquarters in New York, had a simple thing to say about Rome in the 1920s: “The lesson of Rome is for wise men, for those who know and can appreciate, who can resist and verify. Rome is the damnation of the half-educated. To send architectural students to Rome is to cripple them for life.”

At first glance, this quote is pretty funny, especially since dozens of American and Canadian universities have established programs in Rome and elsewhere in Italy. Right now, 35 Iowa State design students are just finishing up their semester in Rome, and a group of 50 Iowa State architects are preparing to come for the spring. But why is everybody coming to Rome if one of the great architects of the modern era has condemned it?

At second glance, Corb’s quote makes much more sense. The key to it is not the “damnation” part, but rather the “resist and verify” part. Too many young students might go to Rome and simply copy what they see — the great Classical, Renaissance and Baroque works — without thinking for themselves.

It’s not wrong to send architecture students to Rome, but it is wrong to send them and expect them to reproduce without creating as well, without pushing the limits and testing what is right.

This thought rings particularly true in my mind after having lived and worked in Rome for over three months.

When I first arrived, I was overwhelmed by the history, the buildings, the culture, the crowds of tourists and sandwich vendors. All I could do was absorb and take in what was around me. But after time, I was strangely motivated to produce, to create, to process what I’ve seen and apply it — not to photocopy it — but to learn and be inspired.

It could be argued that all great architecture ultimately leads back to Rome. Le Corbusier had strong connections to Rome, although they were more in the form of being anti-Rome, of opposing the historicism and neo-Classicism of the city and using that as a springboard towards a new architecture. Many other great architects have applied the lessons of Rome as well, although each in their own way. Two of the greatest American architects of the past 40 years, Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi (some might say that Kahn, while enjoying less name recognition, has had more significance in American architecture than that guy named Frank Lloyd Wright), both spent time studying in Rome. The legacy of Rome can be seen in their works, although again, not as a photocopy, but as an inspiration.

Once upon a time, a young man, educated in the art of drawing and with a passion for architecture, traveled far to come to Rome. He fell so in love with what he found there that he spent most of the rest of his life trying to share it with others through drawings and words, and he used it to inspire his own architecture. In his own words, “These speaking ruins have filled my spirit with images that accurate drawings, even such as those of the immortal Palladio, could never have succeeded in conveying.” His name was Giovanni Battista Piranesi, he wrote this in the 1740s, and the etchings he did are now some of the most famous visual records of Rome that exist. He is a shining example of how the spirit of Rome can push the imagination and inspire the heart.

Oh, how I wish I had the time to talk about all the things I’ve learned about architecture this semester! I could fill a whole semester’s worth of columns with thoughts of history, layering, brick-faced concrete, fountains, Scarpa details, tension rods, cobblestones, travertine, contextual meaning, obelisks, basilicas, classical orders, domes, aqueducts, alabaster, gli affetti, Bernini and Borromini, “complexity and contradiction,” concavity, curiae, chapels, double-helix wells, Paestum, imperial bath complexes, villas, auditorium seats, and a hundred other random assemblages of architectural thought. And I’m sure, of course, that everyone on the Iowa State campus would read all these things with great interest and passion, because, after all, doesn’t everyone really, at heart, just want to be an architect? But it wouldn’t be the same, because it is only through my own hands-on experience of being in Rome that I have learned these things.

Rome is called the Eternal City, mostly because it is so friggin’ old. How many other cities boast of 1,000 years of leading the Western world as a republican and then imperial state, and then another 1,500 years after that of leading the world through the power of the church?

But Rome is also the Eternal City because it lives on in the memories of all who have visited it and shared in its beauty. The lessons of Rome will forever shape my architecture, just as the memories of my experiences here will live on and forever influence the rest of my life.

Matt Ostanik is a senior in architecture from Washington, Ill. In 12 days, he returns to the United States.