What better way to explore the active usage of a dead language than among the dead themselves? Latin 8 and AP Latin students joined their Classics Teachers Natalie Griffin and David Armstrong for an informative and interesting tour of historic Bellefontaine Cemetery and Arboretum.
Their private, docent-led tour gave them the chance to study Western Architecture, including Classical and Egyptian Revival, and explore Latin inscriptions on some of the cemetery’s noted mausoleums and monuments.
To prepare for their visit, Griffin gave her students a small lesson on classical architecture and then sent them on a scavenger hunt around the south campus to identify examples of this style prevalent at our own School.
Students enjoyed their walking tour and lunch in a specially-designated location in the cemetery. Bellefontaine is on the National Registry of Historic Places and is the final resting place of many significant people in and to St. Louis, including Missouri Governor William Clark of Lewis and Clark fame, William Greenleaf Eliot, the founder of our school, Adolphus Busch, and many other members of the Busch family. Suffragette Virginia Minor and Susan Blow, founder of the first kindergarten in the country here in St. Louis, are also interred at Bellefontaine.
What a unique way to explore this classical language that is alive and well at MICDS!