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want to meet at fmd_good City Zoo
want to meet at fmd_good The Donut Shop
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Ancient Rome's Echoes?
The building on Via Cavour has been a school since the 1930s but the palazzo underneath is older, and there's a courtyard students call the chiostro where the arcades supposedly connect to a sealed passage toward the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. Nobody's ever produced proof, it's more of a rite of passage story the older kids tell the ginnasiali. What's actually true and worth a line in your talk is that the place sits right on the ancient Suburra, so the "echoes" aren't just metaphorical, you're literally standing on top of the old plebeian quarter.
ngl the thing locals actually talk about isnt ghosts its the mosaics. the Giulio Cesare sits on Via Cavour right over the old Suburra and when they did work on the basement gym in the 90s they hit a roman floor, black and white tesserae, and just... covered it back up and kept going. kids have been sneaking down to peek through a grate near the boiler room for decades.
for your talk the better hook is the name itself. "Giulio Cesare" as a liceo classico was basically a fascist rebrand, they renamed a bunch of schools after roman emperors in the 30s to tie the regime to antiquity. so the building is literally a propaganda artifact pretending to be ancient. that irony lands harder than any haunted classroom imo.
honestly the lore i heard from a guy who taught there is less about ghosts and more about the bells. the Giulio Cesare shares a wall with the Basilica di San Pietro in Vincoli, where Moses with the horns is, and the students swear the 7am bells bleed through the east classrooms during lectures. one prof apparently timed his whole syllabus around it.
also check the stairwell near the Aula Magna, there's old graffiti carved into the marble from the fascist era when the building got its current layout. some of it's been half scrubbed but you can still make out names and dates from the late 30s. that's the real "echo" if you want something for the talk, students literally reading their predecessors' initials on the way to class.
What are current tobacco prices for LM Blue or Chesterfield Blue?
tbh duty free at Riga is only worth it if you're buying cartons, single packs at the airport arent that much cheaper than teh tabaccai in Rome. also remember you can only bring a limited amount into the EU anyway so stockpiling has its limits
Chesterfield Blue usually runs around 5.50 to 6 euros a pack in Rome these days, though tabaccai prices are fixed by the state so it won't vary much shop to shop. Riga is generally cheaper for cigarettes but your layover time matters, if it's tight you might not have time to clear security and find a shop.
LM Blue in Rome is roughly the same ballpark, around 5.50 to 6 euros. One thing to keep in mind at Riga airport, the duty free selection isn't always great for specific brands like these, so if you're set on LM or Chesterfield you might strike out. I'd check what the actual duty free has before counting on it.