I first heard about Samothrace after just having changed the course of my academic career. Newly an architecture major in the spring of my freshman year, the prospect of working halfway across the world felt intangible. Sitting in what would become my usual spot of the Manfredi Family Auditorium at Notre Dame, apparitions of the hills and waves of island life, exploring the mysteries of ancient cult activity, and discovering Mediterranean art and lifestyle danced before my eyes. I wrote it off as a life for someone who had things figured out.
Professor Alessandro Pierattini presented the opportunity calmly and concisely to our history class, detailing a summer of drawing and surveying archeological materials from Samothrace, a Greek island in the North Aegean Sea. Under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, students could enrich their graphic, research, and perceptive skills by engaging with some of the most consequential architectural material of foundational classicism: the Sanctuary of the Great Gods.
But I let the opportunity pass. I held myself hostage because I considered discernment something I had not yet achieved: a prerequisite to taking chances, rather than a continuous process of discovery. Undertaking such a responsibility seemed worlds away, especially having just entered an entirely new world of study (that I now know and love). Samothrace eventually became an essential part of discovering myself.
There’s a reason why people say Samothrace is magical.
As I built on my drawing techniques in architecture studio, accrued experience 3-D modeling during independent studies, and grew into my independence as I became a young adult, I also became more comfortable with the vastness of opportunity and space to learn that awaited me no matter where on earth I set foot. I became enamored with the consistent human tendency to beautify by building: it transcends history and place. I became determined to be a steward of history and about the origins of the storied structures I had learned so much about so far, such as from Pierattini’s class on the history of Greek and Roman architecture.
I also became determined to build on the experience I had in Isthmia, Greece, during the summer after my sophomore year, where I was first exposed to the field of archaeology, and began to learn the value accuracy and attentive care to architectural preservation.
While I concluded my time in Rome for the two-semester undergraduate architecture study abroad program, I’m grateful to the rare fact that the opportunity arose again. This second chance from Prof. Pierattini became a turning point because in this instance, I was prepared to address my interests confidently. My passion for preserving the art of the built world has been continually strengthened by not waiting for the perfect moment to take steps toward what I care about, but rather trusting myself and others, perhaps unlike that eighteen-year-old mired in the fog of making intimidating decisions about her future.
In Greece this past summer, I worked on the island of Samothraki, or Samothrace. I joined the architectural research and documentation team led by Professor Samuel Holzman of Princeton University among a larger team of individuals I can now call close friends, including archeologists, surveyors, conservators, and other experts in preserving memory. Whether it was drawing blocks in the field, using digital visualization programs, organizing and troubleshooting publication materials, or creating 3-D models of finds in order to determine their true form and original purpose, I continued to find purpose in the fact that I was safeguarding stories that may be lost to time without our efforts. Samothrace is filled with impressively preserved architecture: a 100-meter Hellenistic stoa (covered portico), hundreds of crumbled columns and other temple remains, ancient fortification walls, the largest roofed tholos (rotunda) in the Greek world, and much more. While I grew in loyalty to this architecture and its longevity, I also bonded tremendously with the people around me that shared this mission, and found that I gained skills I’m so happy to have been exposed to along the way. These don’t only include technical abilities; I also learned to take my time, ask for help when I needed it, and above all, collaborate with people from a place of learning, no matter how that learning was administered.
My peers, supervisors, and friends all had one thing in common: a sense of duty. Duty to respect the art for and with which we worked, and also duty to the island and its ecology. There’s a reason why people say Samothrace is magical. The most important thing was to acknowledge and allow this magic to permeate my work, and continue to find magic in the future. When days got monotonous, or frustrating, or unbearably humid, I found that looking to the people who had a hand in building the monuments I was so lucky to study, as well as the people who made my summer experience possible, made even the most tiring days as refreshing as a Samothracian breeze.The North Aegean.
Avery Polking '27 is a junior majoring in Architecture with a concentration in Historic Preservation and Restoration.
Originally published by at nanovic.nd.edu on February 02, 2026.