Transcript

5.8.25 · Smithsonian Magazine

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
0:05
I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
0:08
twenty twenty five. As a reminder, Radio Eye is a
0:12
reading service intended for people who are blind or have
0:15
other disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material.
0:19
Please join me now for part one of Explore Rome's
0:23
Hidden Underworld, Where a city lurks beneath a city, A
0:28
journey into the vast subterranean grounds preserved under Rome, from
0:32
ancient aqueducts and apartment buildings to pagan shrines by Tony Perretae.
0:40
Watch out for that bat behind you, warned Luca Messina,
0:43
a civil engineer who moonlights as a spilio archeologist with
0:48
Soturane di Roma Undergrounds of Rome, a local group whose
0:52
members explore the darkest recesses of the eternal city. I
0:57
ducked as the winged mammal swooped past my ear, then
1:01
flitted beyond the beam of my head lamp and disappeared
1:04
into the void a head. Don't worry about those insects,
1:08
Messina added, nodding to walls hewn twenty three hundred years
1:12
ago and which I now saw were crawling with spider
1:15
like crickets called de lochipoda. They aren't dangerous. Messina and
1:22
I were standing in a sepulpral stretch of the Aquaanio Vitas,
1:26
one of the superbly crafted aqueducts that once channeled water
1:30
into ancient Rome, built beginning in two seventy two b
1:33
c and dry for nearly fifteen hundred years. To some
1:38
this might be the stuff of nightmares and horror movies,
1:41
but to me it was the start of an obsession
1:44
with the city's last hidden corners. Earlier that morning, i'd
1:48
met the half dozen fellow expedition members from Sotarane de Roma,
1:53
all self taught adventurers like Messina, for a cappuccino and
1:57
cornetto at one of the city's eastern metro stations. Chatting
2:02
cheerfully in a nearby parking lot, we geared up in
2:05
hard hats and head lamps, although some of the group
2:08
also had industrial steel tipped boots and gray protective overalls
2:12
bearing the association's logo, an artistic outline of an ancient empheror.
2:19
A short drive took us into the surprisingly wild city
2:22
surrounds known as the Roman Campagna or countryside, where we
2:26
hiked across empty fields of tall grass and purple flowers,
2:30
each of us carrying sightlike implements to cut our way
2:34
through the underbrush. We're only a twenty minute drive from Rome,
2:38
and it's like the Amazon rainforest, Messina said, laughing. After
2:44
passing beneath the overgrown arch of the ancient Talela Bridge,
2:48
which loomed like a relic from an alien civilization. The
2:51
eyes of the group members turned resolutely downward. Our popular
2:57
image of Roman aqueducts is of monumental above ground structures.
3:01
They can be seen most vividly in the Park of
3:04
the Aqueducts, where six meet southeast of the city, but
3:08
the vast bulk of their routes were actually underground, engineered
3:12
at a slight decline to use gravity to keep the
3:15
water flowing. Over a period of some five hundred years,
3:20
from three twelve BC to a d. Two twenty six eleven,
3:24
extraordinary aqueducts were built to supply the ancient city. Ten
3:29
were cut when the Goths besieged Rome in a d.
3:32
Five thirty seven, and to day their tunnels still snake
3:36
beneath the modern city and for miles around, although they
3:39
have never been properly mapped. Locating them involves detective work
3:44
and has attracted eccentric explorers since interest in antiquity was
3:49
revived in the Renaissance. The most complete studies were done
3:53
by the British archaeologist and scholar Thomas Ashby, who scoured
3:58
the remotest corners of the Roman Campagna from nineteen o
4:01
six to nineteen twenty five and produced a magisterial tome,
4:06
The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome, which was published posthumously by
4:10
his wife in nineteen thirty five. Today, Messina and other
4:14
intrepid members of Soturane di Roma use modern technology to
4:20
expand on Ashby's findings. Ashby mapped many aqueducts in detail,
4:26
but he obviously had no GPS and couldn't cite precise locations.
4:31
Messina said, so his descriptions include landmarks that no longer exist,
4:36
farmhouses that have vanished, trails have changed course, buildings destroyed
4:42
in the war. We tried to identify the spots he
4:45
found a century ago, mapped them with GPS systems and
4:49
post them on Google Earth. About twenty minutes later, Messina
4:54
spotted Acippus, a low stone pillar placed during the reign
4:58
of Augustus, the first Emperor, every two hundred forty Roman
5:02
feet eleven point six inches to mark an aqueduct's subterranean course.
5:08
There are thousands of them in the countryside, he said,
5:11
only God really knows how many. A nearby hole hidden
5:16
by branches was an entrance to a vertical shaft once
5:19
used by skilled Roman teams called aquari to access the
5:23
aqueducts for maintenance. Calcium deposits are a problem in aqueducts,
5:29
affecting the flow, he noted, They're like espresso machines. You
5:33
have to clean them. Ancient footholds remain carved into the
5:37
walls of the shaft, but the group opted to use
5:40
a portable wire ladder to descend the twenty five feet
5:44
Soon I was standing in a smooth stone corridor that
5:48
few people have entered for the last fifteen centuries. With
5:52
our head lamps lit, we clambered hunched over for about
5:57
eighty yards into the pitch darkness, which an Italian is
6:00
referred to as ill oblio oblivion. The air, which has
6:05
not circulated for millennia, became stale. At one point we
6:10
scrambled over a pile of debris where part of the
6:13
ceiling had caved in. It's very safe, Messina assured me.
6:18
There has only been one collapse in twenty three hundred years,
6:21
so we'd have to be very unlucky to be trapped.
6:25
I gazed ahead as he mapped the space with a
6:28
hand held three D scanner. Keep going, he said with satisfaction,
6:33
and you'd end up on Rome's Esqualine Hill. Descending into
6:38
the Annio Vitus offered me a rare sense of discovery
6:42
in one of the world's most heavily visited cities, whose
6:45
famous antique treasures have been admired by medieval pilgrims, eighteenth
6:50
century grand tourists, English Romantics, and contemporary Italophiles. Having first
6:57
visited Rome more than two decades ago to rece book
7:00
on Ancient Roman Tourists, I believed I had seen all
7:04
the classical sites of note, but the adventure inside the
7:08
aqueduct showed me that the city has a hidden dimension,
7:12
and it is hardly the only subterranean site offering a
7:16
fresh perspective on Rome's venerable grandeur. If you know where
7:20
to look. Any One who visits Imperial Rome's most renowned
7:24
relics the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Temple of Saturn, notices
7:29
that their foundations lie far below the level of the
7:32
modern streets. Since the demise of the Empire in the
7:36
fifth century a d. The ancient city has been buried
7:40
under some thirty feet of urban debris and construction, and
7:44
the majority of it remains hidden under visitor's feet. In fact,
7:49
there are enough subterranean spaces that regular street collapses swallow
7:53
car's whole, making Rome the sinkhole capital of Europe according
7:58
to the London Times. But this has also turned the
8:03
city into a paradise for a quirky new breed of
8:06
spielio Archaeologists inspired amateurs who work with academics to piece
8:12
together a more complete map of how the Imperial city
8:15
has evolved over the last three millennia, revealing a fascinating
8:19
multi dimensional honeycomb of pagan shrines, public baths, hidden lakes, nymphiums,
8:26
private baths of the rich, adorned with seashells and faux forests,
8:30
grand sewers, mining tunnels, Christian catacombs and ossuaries. In a sense,
8:37
its Roman archaeology's final frontier. Many people think of Imperial
8:43
Rome as a lost city, explained Giusuppina Mattieri, an earth
8:48
scientist at George Mason University outside Washington, d C. When
8:53
I met her for lunch last summer on Izola Tiberina,
8:57
the trireme shaped island in the middle of the river.
9:01
But that's the interesting thing. It's not gone. Romans just
9:05
built on top of it for century after century. The
9:09
Rome born Matiati, who has lived in the United States
9:12
for some thirty years, has joined Saccherane de Roma on
9:16
numerous adventures over the last ten or so summers, everything
9:20
from crawling on elbows through tunnels beneath Palatine Hill to
9:24
wading through the Cloaca Maxima, the magnificent sewer that the
9:29
first century a d scholar Pliny the Elder regarded as
9:32
a marvel of engineering and still functions as an active
9:36
part of the modern city's infrastructure. I had to wear
9:40
a full hazmat suit and have shots for hepatitis, typhoid, choleras.
9:45
She told me everything short of anthrax. I took them all.
9:50
Descending through a melodorous entrance in the Roman Forum, the
9:54
team waded through the sewer until the water current became
9:57
too powerful. We had to proceed by digging sticks in
10:01
the mud so we wouldn't be dragged under by the floe.
10:05
That wasn't an experience I was keen to repeat. But
10:08
luckily there are many other underground sites that are entirely
10:12
accessible to travelers with some insider guidance, Matiette said, if
10:17
they know about them. Every summer she takes students below
10:21
the sidewalks of the historical center Centro Storico, via little
10:26
known public museums like the Crypta Balbi, where visitors descend
10:30
forty feet from the busy modern street level of cafes
10:33
and souvenir stores by the Piazza Vincia, and the recently
10:37
opened Roman Houses of Celio, which includes a lavishly frescoed
10:42
aristocratic villa from the third century a D. Many Christian
10:46
churches also have haunting basement levels, most impressively the Basilica
10:52
of San Clemente, where visitors end up in a methraem,
10:56
an altar devoted to a pagan cult popular in the
10:59
first century a D. Ancient mosaics even turn up in
11:03
the basements of restaurants like Pancrazio in the old Pompey's Theater,
11:07
near where Julius Caesar was stamped, while the walls of
11:11
some bars in Tistacio have glass windows to reveal layers
11:16
of broken clay amphorae discarded in antiquity. But many of
11:21
Matieti's favorite subterranean sites require some planning to visit, she said,
11:26
since Rome's understaffed Special Superintendence of Archaeology only opens them
11:32
by special request. This involves calling a local number and
11:37
often requires a modest minimum fee of forty euros. After
11:42
luncheon Trastevere, whose name comes from the Latin for across
11:46
the Tiber, Matieti led me to the Renaissance era Palazzo's
11:50
Specci and the church of San Paolo a la Rigola.
11:54
Nothing indicated they were of unusual interest until a young
11:58
custodian in the uniform of the superintendents arrived with an
12:02
enormous rusty key, then unlocked a metal doorway in the
12:06
palazzo's exterior to reveal worn stone stairs lit by a
12:11
bare bulb. We gazed down in silence for a moment,
12:15
as if we were entering Tutan Kamen's tomb. We are
12:19
used to seeing cities horizontally, Matieti observed, we talk about
12:23
urban sprawl and spatial terms. But if we look at
12:27
cities vertically, it creates a timeline right back to when
12:31
the first people said this is a good place to live.
12:35
The steps led twenty five feet down into an insula
12:38
literally island or Roman apartment complex. Matietti explained that this
12:44
river front area of the Tiber in the first century
12:47
AD was home to horse stables, shipping warehouses, and sacred
12:52
oak groves, but by the second century destruction structures were
12:56
taken over as residents by poor Roman and they remained
13:01
inhabited through the Middle Ages. The strata of archaeological remains
13:06
in Rome are often compared to Lasagna, she added, with
13:10
layer after layer piled on top of each other, but
13:13
they also overlap. In the United States, we demolish old
13:17
buildings and start over, and the ancient world people reused them.
13:22
Structures were built to last. Some underground sites were even
13:27
repurposed in World War II as air raid shelters, including
13:31
the basement at the eighteenth century Villa Terlonia, where Mussolini
13:35
lived from nineteen twenty five to nineteen forty three. Exploring
13:40
humble dwellings provides a fuller image of Roman society, she
13:44
argues when we look at the ruins of ancient Rome,
13:47
we often see what its emperors and aristocratic rulers wanted
13:51
us to see, the Colosseum, the forums, all the great monuments.
13:56
But what about the real Romans who made up ninety
13:58
percent of the population and brought the city alive. They
14:02
are part of the story too. Why don't you come
14:06
to the cave for pizza tonight? Marco Placidi, a founding
14:10
member of Sotrane di Roma, asked me when I inquired
14:14
about his latest work, it was an irresistible offer, and
14:18
twenty twenty, Placidi said, the group opened its headquarters in
14:22
the Labyrinth of Rome, a vast network of tunnels that
14:26
extends for some twenty two miles beneath Caffarella Park, a
14:30
green oasis in the southeast of the city near the
14:33
ancient Appian Way. The quarry was initially dug in the
14:37
first century BC as a source for tuff, a volcanic
14:42
rock that was pulverized as an ingredient for Roman concrete,
14:46
the strong essential material used to construct the city's most
14:50
illustrious architectural wonders, and so at dusk I followed Italian
14:55
families walking their dogs along bucolic paths, through fields fringed
15:00
with flowers, duck filled lakes, and woodland until I spotted
15:03
the quarry's moss covered entrance, where a half dozen club members,
15:08
including that Dietti, were chatting at a table over boxed
15:12
take away pizzas, olives, and wine. My interest in the
15:16
underground began organically, said Placidi, whose day job is as
15:21
a work safety officer at a local energy company, when
15:25
a friend visited him from out of town in the
15:28
nineteen nineties, they went on a tour of the most
15:31
renowned Roman tourist sites. We were frustrated at how controlled
15:35
things were, He said. You couldn't even take photos in
15:38
the Vatican Museum. So we decided to find more unusual
15:43
hidden places where we could experience the city more freely,
15:47
walk where we wanted, touch things, and that very often
15:50
brought us to hidden spots below Rome's surface. In two thousand,
15:56
he and a handful of fellow enthusiasts founded the first
15:59
Speeling Archaeological Club, which split into two rival groups about
16:04
a decade ago. We started pre internet with fifty members,
16:08
Placidi said. We now have two thousand or so members,
16:12
including Europeans, Americans, Japanese renting an the Labyrinth of Rome
16:18
at a nominal fee from its owners fulfilled one of
16:21
Placidi's fantasies. Rome's central Sto Rico is a web of bureaucracy,
16:28
he lamented. When we work at sites there, we have
16:32
to deal with the Superintendency of Archaeology, the Commune of Rome,
16:36
city government, the Vatican, the water Company Asia. But the
16:40
quarry is privately owned, which gives us a lot of freedom.
16:44
After the pizza, we descended into the tunnels, which were
16:48
garlanded with electric lights for the first hundred or so yards.
16:53
The association has converted several of the first rough hewn
16:57
chambers into meeting rooms, luting a recreated mithrium decorated with
17:03
faux Roman statues surrounded by ferns, which members have dubbed
17:07
Le bat Caverna. Every weekend they conduct walking tours and
17:12
eventhed groups on mountain bikes into the darkest recesses of
17:16
the complex. Wandering deeper into the dank maze, we arrived
17:21
at a metal ladder leading twenty feet up to a
17:24
hole in the stone ceiling. In the Middle Ages, tomb
17:28
raiders knew the quarry extended beneath an early Christian catacomb,
17:33
Placidi said, so they dug upward. Another club member, a
17:37
Spanish born school teacher named Alfonso diaz Beau, started climbing
17:43
and beckoned me to follow, as Placidi held the latter steady.
17:47
Soon I was crawling in the fetid darkness as my
17:50
head lamp lit up niches filled with shards of pottery
17:54
and Roman mosaics, and what I realized were human remains,
17:58
including a skull. The grave robbers hoped to find treasure.
18:03
Diez Bau said, all they found were bones. I had
18:07
been to several of the more official catacombs run by
18:11
the Church, many of which were impressive complexes, Saint Sebastian
18:15
with the Pagan Basement with Medusa frescoes, Saint Calixtus with
18:20
its four underground levels. But somehow squatting in the darkness
18:24
with my hands and knees covered in grime caught my imagination. More.
18:29
Some academics looked down on Souturane di Roma Association as amateurs,
18:35
Matietti said after she joined us crouching in the musty alcove.
18:40
But I think the members are like citizen scientists. In
18:43
the US. They are dedicated and deeply passionate. They don't
18:47
get any glory out of it, certainly no money. They
18:50
explore for the love of it. One veteran member I
18:53
met had the letters S P q R tattooed on
18:57
his wrist, the Latin motto of the ancient city, the
19:00
Sonatus populesque Romanus, the Senate and the people of Rome.
19:05
The reality is that most academic archaeologists don't want to
19:10
explore underground. They don't have the means, they don't have
19:13
the training, and frankly, they don't want to kill themselves.
19:17
News of other underground sites is passed on by word
19:20
of mouth. For some time, I'd heard rumors about lakes
19:24
hidden beneath the Temple of Claudius on the Calian Hill,
19:28
in the very heart of the ancient city. It sounded
19:31
like something out of a Jules Verne novel. But some
19:34
Roman friends in the know tipped me off that visits
19:38
are now organized by the city's other organization, Aspilio Archaeologists,
19:43
which has the confusingly similar name Roma Saturania Rome Underground.
19:49
And so the next afternoon I set off to find
19:52
the ancient temple's entrance which in the Middle Ages was
19:55
cannibalized as part of the Church of Saints. John and
19:59
paul I promptly became lost wandering around the church's ornate interior,
20:05
until a kindly sacristan in black robes took pity and
20:09
led me to a metal grille by a court yard
20:12
where a half dozen excited Romans were putting on hard hats.
20:16
Built after Emperor Claudius's death in a d. Fifty four,
20:21
the temple was once one of Imperial Rome's most extravagant
20:25
pagan edifices, whose foundations measured some six hundred by six
20:29
fifty feet, more than the area of two football fields.
20:34
A young guide named Chiara Masamiani pointed out several of
20:38
its monolithic columns still embedded in the church structure, then
20:43
led us down steep metal steps to a rough hewn opening. Instantly,
20:47
the summer heat of Rome was replaced by the cold,
20:50
clammy air of tunnels that, like the Labyrinth of Rome,
20:54
were first carved to mine tough. We then entered a
20:58
cavern containing the first of two small lakes, filled with
21:02
eerily blue vodka clear water. It was also biologically pure.
21:08
Masimiani noted rain water has dripped through ten meters of
21:13
stone above our heads, so all the impurities have been removed.
21:17
We could drink it like Pellegrino. She felt a civic
21:21
pride that Rome still had secrets to reveal. To have
21:25
such a sight only a few hundred meters from the
21:27
Colosseum and Forum is a marvelous thing. Magical, though the
21:33
lakes are. The deepest passion among Romantics and scholars has
21:37
been aroused by the man made water systems. Before traveling
21:41
to Italy, I'd tracked down a copy of Thomas Ashby's
21:45
The Aqueducts of Ancient Rome, which is so rare that
21:49
I was obliged to read it in a supervised section
21:52
of the New York City Public Library. Pouring over brittle
21:56
yellowed pages, meticulously drawn maps, and murky black and white photos.
22:02
It was easy to share Ashby's sense of wonder, and
22:05
today the network remains key to understanding Rome's inner workings.
22:10
In the ancient city, water didn't just sprout from nowhere,
22:14
Matietti said. For centuries, people had to carry it up
22:17
from the Tiber. There were cisterns on the Seven Hills
22:21
to collect rain, but the city's growth was limited until
22:25
Roman engineers devised the aqueducts. The increase in drinking water
22:29
allowed Rome to expand into an imperial megalopolis by the
22:34
first century AD, with an estimated population of one million people.
22:39
To explore the network, I started in Rome's most water
22:43
oriented hotel, the Anantara Palazzo Naiadi. It was built in
22:49
grandiose Neoclassical style in the late eighteen hundreds to follow
22:53
the curved walls of the exedra or waiting room of
22:57
the enormous third century A d baths of Diocletian, which
23:01
covered some thirty two acres and allowed three thousand bathers
23:05
at a time. In palatial marble encased chambers and pools,
23:09
the hotel has mosaics from the baths in its basement
23:13
and a pool on its rooftop, a rarity for Rome.
23:18
It also looms above the fountains of the Naiads, decorated
23:21
with frolicking water nymphs, which was erected in the Piazza
23:25
della Republica beginning in eighteen eighty eight, when a short
23:30
stretch of one aqueduct, the Aqua Marcia, was revived by
23:34
Italian engineers with modern hydraulic pumps. The hotel has so
23:40
embraced the ancient aquatic past that it even offers an
23:44
early morning jogging tour retracing the aqueduct roots, led by
23:48
a Roman art historian, Isabella Caledonna, a pursuit she dubs
23:53
archaeo running. Our focus was to follow the one ancient
23:57
aqueduct that still functions today, the Aqua Virgo, as it
24:02
was named in Latin, or Aqua Virghini in Italian, a
24:07
thirteen mile artery inaugurated by Marcus Agrippa, the brilliant general
24:12
and son in law of Emperor Augustus in nineteen b C.
24:17
When the other ten aqueducts were broken by the Goths
24:20
in five thirty seven a d. The Virgoes channels, which
24:24
were laid mostly underground, remained intact when its flow was
24:29
reduced and it fell into disuse during the Middle Ages.
24:32
The lack of drinking water helped turn Rome into a
24:36
virtual ghost town. Who would live in such a city Calledonna,
24:40
asked rhetorically. The Aqua Virgo was restored to its original
24:44
glory by Pope Nicholas the fifth and fourteen fifty three,
24:48
helping to provide the life giving water needed for Rome's
24:52
expansion and rebirth, literally its Renaissance, water has always been
24:58
a symbol of power in Rome, Calledonna, declared as we
25:01
set off in the eerie, traffic free calm of seven
25:05
a m. In antiquity, the emperors built splendid baths for
25:09
the people, and in the Renaissance the popes built magnificent fountains.
25:15
A key stop was one of Rome's most beloved tourist attractions,
25:19
the Trevi Fountain, an eighteenth century Baroque masterpiece adorned with
25:23
statues of the water deity Oceanus in a shell covered chariot,
25:28
surrounded by merman and which, unbeknown to the many thousands
25:32
who tossed coins into its depths daily, is fed by
25:36
the Aqua Virgo. Several stretches of the aqueduct are visible
25:41
near by. We jogged past one original section, exposed behind
25:45
an iron fence on the Via del Nazzereno. Then entered
25:50
a department store called Lrina Stente on the Via del Tretone,
25:55
whose floor plan promised in the basement aquedato. It seemed
26:00
wildly unlikely, but after writing the escalator down past the
26:04
latest Gucci and prodest summer fashions, we found fifteen intact
26:09
stone arches extending nearly two hundred feet. A quirky museum
26:14
near by, the Vicis Caiparius City of Water, allows visitors
26:19
to explore yet another section at the aqueduct and its workings,
26:23
discovered during excavations for a movie theater between nineteen ninety
26:27
nine and two thousand one. Rumors and urban myths circulate
26:32
all around the Aqua. Virgo Matietti had told me there
26:36
was a rarely used entrance through which one could descend
26:40
a lovely Renaissance staircase and wade through its still flowing
26:44
waist high waters, the holy grail for any one fascinated
26:47
by the underground, but access was controlled by the modern
26:51
Roman water board Assia, making it as difficult to penetrate
26:56
as the Vatican's inner sanctum. In fact, I had put
26:59
in a formal application two months earlier, but had heard nothing.
27:04
It seemed an impossible goal, so I turned instead to
27:09
the adventurers of the group Saturane de Roma to see
27:13
if they knew of a site that was almost as exciting.
27:17
That was how I found myself on my last morning
27:19
in Rome, driving back into the verdant countryside of the
27:23
Roman Campagna to engage in a modest act of guerrilla archaeology.
27:28
Placide and Diezbo hoped to take me into the ancient
27:32
locale whose engineering had most impressed the indefatigable Thomas Ashby,
27:38
in the village of Vicovaro, about thirty miles from the Forum,
27:43
where two aqueducts, the Claudia and the Marcia, meet and overlap.
27:50
On the way, they warned that access to the underground
27:54
intersection would be a challenge. This concludes readings from the
28:00
Smithsonian Magazine for to day. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore.
28:06
Thank you for listening, and have a great day.