Nat Geo_Underground Rome
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00:00🎵
00:29Rome, the eternal city.
00:33But what you see is only the tip of the iceberg.
00:59🎵
01:10Under this bustling modern metropolis is the remains of another eternal city,
01:15entombed underground since the fall of Rome.
01:20🎵
01:33Today, when we walk through the city of Rome,
01:35underneath every single building that exists within those walls,
01:39there is something ancient underneath it.
01:42These are dark, hidden places.
01:45Homes, sanctuaries, roads, aqueducts.
01:50Each filled with wonders and challenges.
01:54This is the story of a city you thought you knew,
01:57and of a team of dedicated people working to unlock its deepest secrets.
02:03It's a journey through time,
02:05as we take you places few have seen,
02:08and where fewer still dare to go.
02:11Travel deep into Rome's underworld,
02:14and find beauty in the most unlikely of places.
02:18All in the name of discovery.
02:22Unearth What Lies Beneath.
02:25🎵
02:31Rome is the largest open-air museum in the world,
02:35and that's without even going underground.
02:37So underground is even richer.
02:40Dr. Darius Aria is one of the leading archaeologists
02:44working to uncover Rome's past.
02:48Whatever you dig in the city of Rome, you find something ancient.
02:52There's a house, there's a piazza, there are porticos,
02:56there's a temple, there's a shrine, there's a fountain,
02:59there are insulae, the apartment buildings.
03:02So many more layers of history are going to be unpeeled,
03:05and we have just scratched the surface.
03:08The entire city of ancient Rome is hidden underground.
03:12Thousands of acres of buried history.
03:15How is this possible?
03:17The ground level of Rome has been steadily rising
03:20over the past 3,000 years,
03:22in some places up to 60 feet.
03:25And it was happening not because every couple of decades
03:29they said, let's jack up the city,
03:31but because there was a devastating flood, earthquakes,
03:35or there was a devastating fire.
03:37The debris that accumulates from the destruction,
03:40they leave that material there, level it off,
03:44they fill it in, and they go up.
03:47Now Rome's past is being rediscovered,
03:50but the underground is notoriously unstable and unsafe.
03:54When you have these archaeological explorations underground,
03:58many times the archaeologist has to call upon a specialist
04:01called a speleoarchaeologist,
04:03like the people of Roma Subterranea.
04:07The skills that they have are not the skills
04:10of your average archaeologist.
04:12That is, when you sign up to become an archaeologist,
04:15part of the study is not repelling.
04:18They can get to places that a lot of the scholars
04:21are not going to be able to get at.
04:24They're also going to be able to do things like scuba dive
04:27and go through some of the channels
04:29that are still filled with water.
04:31And it's extremely dangerous work.
04:33It's not for the average person,
04:35but for someone that has spent a lot of time in training,
04:38in climbing, in repelling, and so forth.
04:41Adriano Morabito is one of the founders of Roma Subterranea.
04:47Basically, all the undergrounds were seen as places
04:52where it was difficult to go,
04:55and most of the time they were studied from the outside.
05:00What we thought was that instead in most of these places
05:05you can really go in and check personally
05:09what's going on there, what's there,
05:12what are the archaeological remains.
05:15And this is basically the gap that we really filled.
05:22I must tell you that we were really very surprised
05:26to know that there was no one else doing what we started to do.
05:38The people that are involved in Roma Subterranea
05:41are all kinds of people.
05:43It is not something that we do as a job, but we do as a passion.
05:50The undergrounds of Rome, I think,
05:54have such a personality, and they really fascinate so much.
05:59And suddenly you are like in a lift that goes back in time.
06:04You are in a completely different world.
06:25Basically, most of the time it is mapping of this underground.
06:29The archaeologists, they don't know what's there.
06:33So what we do is a mapping with some technical instruments.
06:41You really want to do this not just for the pleasure of doing it,
06:47but because you know that in this way
06:50you will just add a small piece in the big mosaic
06:55of what is the knowledge of ancient Rome.
07:00After you experience that, you want always to go forward
07:06and to have the chance of exploring more.
07:10It's beautiful.
07:20Ancient Rome
07:40Ancient Rome was a city of about 3,000 acres,
07:45all contained within the Aurelian Walls, built between 271 and 275 A.D.
07:54Within these walls, hundreds of archaeological sites are documented.
08:01Yet the number of unknown sites covered by newer structures is countless.
08:07When you go to an underground site, you're not just getting one period.
08:11You're getting multiple periods.
08:13And then in a given area or a given story of a structure,
08:16you can get centuries and centuries, even thousand years, of use of a particular space.
08:22And that's what makes it so rich.
08:26The Basilica of San Clemente is extremely important
08:28because it illustrates all the layers of history of ancient Rome.
08:32The Basilical Church of San Clemente is 12th century that we're standing in right now.
08:37It in turn is on top of the remains of a 5th century church.
08:40Which in turn is on top of extensive Roman ruins,
08:43a Roman house, alleyway, mithraeum, and warehouse.
08:48We're standing in the middle zone of the San Clemente site, the second level.
08:54This church is truncated for the creation of the second church of San Clemente.
09:00This church was slightly larger than the 12th century church of San Clemente above us.
09:06They decided to lop it off at a certain point.
09:08And you can see the frescoes that are basically cutting off a lot of the figures.
09:12Around the 1890s excavations are conducted by the Irish Dominicans
09:17and they rediscovered this earlier church.
09:21It's just extraordinary to walk into the church,
09:25walk down to the remains of the early church that are buried,
09:29and then to walk through that down to a Roman house,
09:33and a Roman warehouse,
09:35and a worship area of the god Mithras.
09:39To find a site like this that illustrates all those layers of history in Rome,
09:44really nothing is better than what we have here in San Clemente.
09:51The undergrounds of Rome, you really explore a secret and undiscovered world.
09:59You have an incredible range of things that you can discover.
10:03It's from the little marble bits or glass bits
10:07to the huge monuments still hidden under modern buildings.
10:14At the end of 2004 we were called by the Superintendence Archeologica.
10:19They told us that they found a big room
10:24and the chance to go in was given by an opening on the big ceiling.
10:28We used the ropes and we found ourselves in this huge hole, very deep,
10:37and in the middle of one of these big walls there was this incredible mosaic.
10:46You really feel privileged because you understand that no one saw that thing for centuries
10:54and we were able to film it.
10:56Right after that we went out and we had all the archaeologists around us
11:02asking, what did you see? What did you see? How does it look like?
11:05And we said, wait, we will show it to you.
11:08I really can remember, as it was yesterday, that there were some of the archaeologists almost crying.
11:13I mean, I'm sure that if you go in a museum you will see things as beautiful as this,
11:18but it's the adrenaline that you have in that specific moment
11:23when you see it for the first time and you understand that you are the first one to see it,
11:29that really makes a difference.
11:41The people that are involved in Roma Sotterana are all kinds of people.
11:46And we like to have this sort of adventure, you know.
12:01I started to go underneath for studying and it was very nice, but people don't understand me.
12:08Even my mummy, every time I get out she says,
12:11phone me please when you are outside now.
12:16But it's not dangerous because we go all together, never alone.
12:21So this is important and it's quite fine.
12:42Here in these underground sites it's immediately intimate.
12:47We get a sense of daily life, what the people were doing.
12:52And once again we are thinking about a vibrant city, we are thinking of a teeming metropolis
12:56and we are thinking of a population density not like New York City but like Calcutta.
13:01We are now nine metres below the modern street level,
13:06as we can hear from the noise and how busy it is on top.
13:11And probably here it was even noisier and busier in the ancient times.
13:16So we have to imagine that there was a road here, a narrow road,
13:21with a lot of people going back and forth because we are in the city centre of Rome.
13:25These buildings facing these roads had on the ground level the taberne, means shops.
13:30On top of this was a high-rise building of the ancient times,
13:35probably five or seven storeys high.
13:39There were people living in really very bad conditions.
13:43This is the average size of an apartment in ancient Rome.
13:47We can see that the size was really small, there was a lot of space,
13:51we can see that the size was really small,
13:55there was a proper wall here closing the light coming from the outside
14:00and the only light was coming from these openings that were bringing also some air.
14:07And then obviously there was the entry door.
14:10A whole family was living here, they were eating here, they were sleeping all together,
14:15there was a bed made of bricks with some straws on top
14:18and their whole life was in this small area.
14:26Most Romans lived in the centre of the city,
14:29because of course that was the most convenient place to live.
14:32Juvenal and Marshal were two satirists who lived in the last part of the first century AD
14:37and they lived in apartments in Rome and they have a lot of complaints
14:41about living in their apartments and then of course also about living in the city
14:44and the hazards and the annoyances of living in the city.
14:48So Juvenal complains that you could live on the top floor of an apartment building
14:53and it could be on fire and you wouldn't know that the building was on fire
14:57and of course that was one of the hazards.
14:59As you can imagine, because the cheapest apartment buildings included a lot of wood
15:03and the buildings were close together and if there was a fire
15:06it would have been very hard to put out the fire.
15:09Living in Rome today is in a sense like living in ancient times.
15:14The buildings are old, the streets impossibly narrow
15:18and your apartment, most likely five stories up with no elevator.
15:23But it's Rome.
15:26The opportunities it offers make everything else worthwhile.
15:39The original megacity, Rome had the luxury of being able to afford to rebuild.
15:45Rome is unique in that the Romans living here with so much wealth
15:50wanted the best and the best, what was the best?
15:55The paintings, the wine, the sculpture, marble, metal, jewelry collections.
16:03All that wealth then becomes concentrated in the hands of the few
16:05and finally when we have an emperor that's able to acquire these collections
16:10he is making them available to the public.
16:13That's why the city is so densely packed with the porticos and the piazzas
16:18and the libraries and the museum spaces
16:21and then as the city is affected by a flood, devastated by an earthquake,
16:26raised to the ground by a fire, there's still all that wealth.
16:30They're able to rebuild again and again and again like no other city.
16:36Evidence of Rome rebuilding is apparent throughout the city,
16:40if you know where to look.
16:43Beneath this church of San Giovanni e Paolo
16:46excavations have revealed stunning examples
16:49of the wealthy lifestyles of Rome's elite.
16:52Life was certainly different for the upper class
16:55and from the majority of people who lived in the apartment buildings.
16:59The wealthy had much larger houses
17:02and since the wealthy might be allowed, in fact usually were allowed
17:06to tap into the public water system and have pipes leading into their own houses,
17:10they had running water and they could have fountains
17:13often beautifully decorated with mosaic.
17:16And some of the houses even had their own private baths.
17:23We are now in the lowest level of the Roman houses
17:27under the church of San Giovanni e Paolo
17:30and this was the house of the Pope.
17:33This was the house of the Pope,
17:36and this was the house of the Pope,
17:39and this was the house of the Pope,
17:42and this was the house of the Pope,
17:45and this was the house of a very wealthy person.
17:48Why we can say this one is because we are now in the baths of this house.
17:54So these were the private baths of this mansion.
17:59This was the hot room of the baths
18:02and we can see this by the structures that are under the floor.
18:09And we can also still find here these hollow bricks
18:13that were giving the chance to the air to flow around and hit the place.
18:20And this is the sewerage serving the whole area and this house.
18:25We can still see the ceiling of the sewerage made with two tiles
18:30put in this very steep angle called cappuccino
18:34and on this one there is still the stamp with the name of the manufacturer.
18:44Many rooms in the houses,
18:47sumptuously decorated in many cases,
18:50people would lavish money on their houses
18:53because it was very important to the elite to have people see
18:57how much they could spend on their houses.
19:01The decorations were quite permanent compared to modern standards.
19:05The floor coverings were often mosaics,
19:08very labor intensive and therefore very, very expensive kind of floor covers.
19:11But also, of course, very permanent
19:14and it's because of the permanence that we are able to see
19:17these kinds of floor coverings because they have remained in many cases.
19:22The wall paintings similarly, these too were quite permanent
19:26and for us that's good because they have remained over the centuries
19:30and we found them during excavations.
19:41So it's Rome with the wealth, Rome with the interest in maintaining that image
19:45that reinvents itself when necessary, after a fire, after a flood
19:50and in every case the city is going up.
19:54And the reason for that is people wanting to occupy the same spaces
19:59for social reasons, political reasons, religious reasons
20:03which leaves us today with all of these layers that we can then come and explore.
20:11So what the archaeologists have done here so beautifully
20:14is to show us the different layers of occupation
20:17of the road that existed right in front of us.
20:19So we have first the layer of the Porticus Minutia
20:22which is then destroyed and you have a roadway passing right through
20:26where there was an ancient structure.
20:28And each single layer then is cut back and beautifully rendered
20:31by the archaeologists' excavation of the different layers of existence of this road.
20:36So they're dumping in, in various periods, sometimes a little bit of material,
20:38sometimes a lot of debris, to raise the road level up and up and up.
20:44And then we get to the construction phase of a massive tower
20:48and in that case, in the Renaissance times, what they're doing is
20:52dumping all kinds of debris with the cement
20:55and at that point they even find two massive blocks
20:58that belong to the Porticus Minutia structure.
21:01And then we go up and we have the beginnings of that later tower.
21:09One of the latest explorations was of a well that we saw inside the Roman houses
21:19and we asked to the archaeologist who was responsible for the area
21:24if it was explored before and she didn't have any documents about these things.
21:31So she was very happy to let us go there.
21:35So we went there with all our gears.
21:38Let's go.
21:46I went down for seven, eight metres, arrived at the bottom of the well
21:51and I was in a gallery.
21:54This gallery was basically an aqueduct or probably a sewer.
21:58And from there, there is a very narrow passage
22:02that gives you the chance to go to an adjoining room,
22:05a bigger room, that is full of debris and full of terracotta and pottery
22:11of all kinds and all shapes.
22:15We took all the information out with pictures.
22:19One day someone will be able to go in there and bring further on the study.
23:05The thing I love most about exploring this underground
23:09is the idea of doing an adventurous thing,
23:12exploring something unexplored and savouring the scent of history.
23:35The goal of the archaeologist is to make a really substantial contribution to the field.
23:40And one way to do that is to conduct an excavation
23:44in a very central area of the city of Rome
23:47and help understand the history of that area, of that site,
23:51learn more about the totem pole,
23:54learn more about the history of the city of Rome,
23:58learn more about the history of the city of Rome,
24:00help understand the history of that area, of that site,
24:04learn more about the topography and the people that were in that particular site,
24:08what they did, and ultimately open that up to the public.
24:11And there's a lot of potential for exploration right in the heart of the city.
24:17One guideline that we're lucky enough to have is the former herbis.
24:21So the former herbis is a map.
24:24It's a very accurate map that's carved onto pieces of marble.
24:27And so what you have then is fragments, maybe about 10% of this incredible plan,
24:32but many of the monuments are labelled.
24:35So that's a great guideline in places like the Cryptobalbi site,
24:38where excavations are ongoing.
24:43The space is incredible because no one has been in here since the 7th century AD
24:50until the excavation that took place just this past year.
24:53And what it has revealed to us is very tantalising,
24:55very, very promising.
24:58Because we're in one hall that continues off in various directions,
25:01plus what we have over here is a filled-in doorway,
25:05and we also have right back here another filled-in doorway.
25:08And you can even see there's a hole so we can peek inside
25:11and see that it's filled with debris and dirt and so on.
25:14So it's just a matter of going through these doors
25:17and removing the dirt and debris to get more spaces like this.
25:20And this is just a starting point for revealing an entire neighbourhood of ancient Rome.
25:25The incredible thing about this area is that we're in the middle of Centro Astorico.
25:36We are in the middle of downtown Rome.
25:39How many people know that an open space about the size of a football field is right over here?
25:43And they don't.
25:45So it's still to discover for the people that live here, the Romans, for the tourists, everybody.
25:49And what we have right over here is a wall that represents
25:52part of the remains of a church which is deconsecrated.
25:55The church is located in the central part of this piazza.
25:58In antiquity, what was there in the central part of the piazza?
26:01We'll find out with future excavations.
26:04But right now we can hypothesize a temple, a shrine, a statue base, a fountain.
26:09Something almost certainly was there because that's what we have in all the other piazzas
26:13in Rome and in the ancient world.
26:16Thousands of underground sites exist.
26:19New sites are discovered nearly every day.
26:22Rome's ancient challenge, then, is to balance the needs of the modern city
26:26while preserving its historical past.
26:30Look closely.
26:32The Eternal City is full of examples of this.
26:35Old and new, living side by side.
26:45It's the new excavations that cause the most havoc.
26:48In Rome today, archaeological finds take precedence over modern development.
26:53That's what makes the architect pull his or her hair out
26:57because they're so frustrated because they want to do this and progress
27:01and move forward and modernize the city and here's a medieval house.
27:05Here is this mosaic floor. Here is this monument.
27:09Preserving Rome's past was not always a priority.
27:13The Hippogium of the Via Livenza is a beautiful sanctuary
27:16adorned with frescoes and mosaics.
27:19Dating back to the 4th century, this treasure was nearly destroyed.
27:24We have just a small portion of the Hippogium of the Via Livenza
27:28because unfortunately they built on top of that
27:31and they destroyed a portion of that one.
27:36Even looking back 70 years ago, everything was destroyed.
27:41They didn't care about those things.
27:43Today, luckily, we care about and that's why they are preserved
27:47and we are lucky enough to see them
27:50and have a rough idea of what it was like at that time.
27:58Rome has learned to live with its past.
28:03Evidence of this can be found in places like Città dell'Acqua
28:07where a modern cinema and bookstore proudly share a space
28:10with ruins of an ancient house.
28:28Water was a key element in sustaining ancient Rome's population.
28:33The mighty aqueducts brought the water in.
28:37The immense sewers moved the wastewaters out.
28:41We are now in the Imperial Forums.
28:44The Cloaca Maxima was built here to dry out all this marshy area.
28:48The Cloaca Maxima was never fully mapped
28:51and this is the reason why we are here.
28:55Most people, when they think of the Cloaca Maxima,
28:58they only think of a sewer.
29:00Instead, it's not like that, it's something more.
29:03It's full of marbles inside,
29:04it's full of archaeological remains.
29:07There are some little waterfalls.
29:09So I think that for me it's really beautiful.
29:12It's very interesting to go in the Cloaca Maxima.
29:16I went there last year,
29:18but I don't suggest you to go there for the smell.
29:23Smell?
29:33OK, here it's very slippery, mine, because there's marble.
29:38And on top of the marble there are some algae growing.
29:42OK, here we can see very well this metal stripe.
29:46This section of the aqueduct was on open air.
29:50And this is the reason why it was made in a monumental way.
29:56So it was completely marble covered
30:00and the water that was flowing in was clean water.
30:10These notches were made to put wooden poles
30:14on which wooden bridges were built to cross the Cloaca
30:19before it was completely covered.
30:27This is one of the main features of the Cloaca Maxima.
30:31We are still in the monumental area,
30:33so you can see these big blocks making the vault.
30:36And there is this secondary gallery creating a waterfall.
30:44So probably this gallery, as well as others,
30:49were collecting water from the Foro Romano
30:53and taking the water into the bigger Cloaca Maxima.
31:04This is not very elegant.
31:13But it's beautiful.
31:24So water is a big part of life in Rome.
31:27You have the Tiber River,
31:29which is navigated for bringing up goods into the city.
31:32You've got structures like the Cloaca Maxima.
31:35You've got the drainage of the runoff from the hills
31:38and all the low-lying grounds.
31:40And then you have the aqueducts.
31:41The aqueducts bring that great fresh water from rivers
31:45and from aquifers from great distances,
31:47even up to 70, 80 kilometers away.
31:50And that water goes into people's homes.
31:52That water goes into fountains.
31:54That water goes into the bath complexes.
31:56It's an incredible enterprise.
31:58And it's so essential then for maintaining that large population.
32:12This is the aqueduct of the Emperor Claudius.
32:16It carried water 86 kilometers to Rome.
32:19It worked only by gravity.
32:22We can still see the signs
32:25of all the sedimentation left on the walls.
32:37The walls were made by the Romans.
32:39The walls were made by a waterproof cement mixture
32:43made of a piece of potteries and terracotta
32:46that we can still see in here,
32:48and then a mixture of clay.
32:50And this created the wall to be completely waterproof.
32:57Many old fountains exist throughout modern-day Rome.
33:02Imagine how many more there were during ancient times.
33:06Here, under a working hospital,
33:09archaeologists have unearthed a wealth of waterworks.
33:22We are under the main entrance
33:25of one of the oldest and busiest hospitals in Rome,
33:29the Ospedale di San Giovanni.
33:31And in this area,
33:32during the building of the new wing,
33:35a great archaeological area was found
33:39where a lot of villas were built.
33:42I am now in the pool of this villa.
33:46The pool was used as a water reservoir.
33:49And in the back we can still see
33:52the feature that was made to let the water in.
33:56So this little waterfall was built.
33:58The man that built this house
34:01was a very successful hydraulic engineer
34:04during the Trajan's period.
34:06So he probably used all this villa
34:09as a showcase for his hydraulic work.
34:12And this is part of the network of waterways
34:16that was used to get rid of the water
34:19from this big complex.
34:21A good example of how everything was working by gravity.
34:25This is one of the three sections
34:28of a huge structure that was built
34:31at the end of the 18th century.
34:34It was a huge building and it was made
34:37by a huge team of scientists,
34:41and the project was about
34:44to be completed by the end of the 19th century.
34:47And the project was about to be completed
34:50by the end of the 19th century.
34:52three sections of a huge cistern that was part of this villa. We can still see the waterproof
34:58material on the walls. The water was brought directly from the aqueduct beside us. In the
35:08late Middle Ages, this same cistern was used as a burial area by the hospital above.
35:15The Hospital of San Giovanni is the oldest working hospital in Rome, founded in the 1300s
35:24to fight the Black Death. But from a historical perspective, the hospital is actually new.
35:34This area was once a thriving neighborhood, home to many of Rome's elite, including the
35:42family of the great emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Aurelius' mother owned a number of businesses
35:48here. A winemaking business, a fabric dyeing business, and a granary. The large pots used
36:02for grain storage still survive, as does a row of taverna, or small shops. The hospital
36:13is evidence that Rome continues to meet the challenge of working around the old to live
36:19with the new.
36:49One of the things that fascinates me the most about places underground is to be one of
37:12the first to enter there. You know you are seeing what others normally don't see, what
37:18tourists normally don't see. It's fascinating to know that other persons have passed this
37:24way thousands of years ago. Maybe the buildings above ground are very beautiful, but there
37:31is too much confusion, too many people. I like the tranquility of the underground.
37:47A lot of sites were buried over time, but there are many sites from antiquity that were
37:52always meant to be underground. Just outside of Rome is the largest of all the imperial
37:58palaces, Hadrian's Villa. The emperor Hadrian designed it himself. His goal? To have all
38:07the working functions of the villa take place out of sight and underground.
38:16We are in Villa Adriana now, and we are on the road that passes through and into the
38:23undergrounds of the villa. We are actually just next to the 100 chambers, and it was
38:30a big space, an underground space, that was created for storage and for living quarters
38:37for the slaves and for people working here. The idea of the emperor was not to see all
38:44these people around, to have the villa for him and for his guests, and everything happened
38:50underground. Everything was moving underground in roads like this. We can see how the wagons
38:56carved the road and made these deep ruts, and at the same time they carved the side
39:04walls with the axles, passing for thousands and thousands of times.
39:14The extent of Villa Adriana was huge. We argue that probably it was around 300 acres, probably
39:20more. Only a small portion of that is known today and was dug out.
39:32Thomas Soterana was brought in to map all the undergrounds of the villa.
39:42This will be very important to understand and give a different reading of what was some
39:52areas of the villa used for.
40:22When you are underground, you can find strange kind of animals and of insects. You can find
40:42snakes or spiders or rats, but they are good. They don't touch you. So even when you can
40:55go and walk, they don't touch you.
40:57We can see a scorpion here. I think that they are more in their natural environment, so
41:05I'm really not scared of them. You have to pay attention.
41:11Jump up there and touch it.
41:15In these places you can also find some bats, but it's dangerous if they fly. But yesterday,
41:24for example, I saw one, but it was still there. It was very nice, very little. You can even
41:31touch him.
41:33Digging and venturing underground is a trip in history and archaeology. Let's say that
41:46it's a psychoanalytic study looking for the most remote memory of Rome.
41:53We are in the main area of the Mithraeum of Circus Maximus. Here in the back we can see
42:04the altar that previously was in the center of this temple.
42:11The building is underground, a big service building that was nearby the Circus Maximus.
42:21Down here we can see the channel that was used to collect the blood that was coming
42:27from the upside. On top there was a ceiling made of wood where the bull was sacrificed.
42:36The blood was coming down on top of the people standing here in this area, in this room,
42:44and from here afterwards the blood was washed away after the ceremony and going in that
42:50little channel there.
42:53One of the interesting things about the Mithraeum of Circus Maximus is that we find a lot of
42:59marble in this place, but it's reused marble gathered from other places around the town,
43:08and we can see very well how some of these are carved or others are with writings on them.
43:21Rome's catacombs evoke a sense of the ancients like nothing else in the city.
43:28These underground burial sites are carved out of the soft volcanic soil.
43:38They meander for nearly 200 miles beneath the surface, tunneling under the roads that
43:45lead out of Rome.
43:48The catacombs that we find outside the walls of ancient Rome are really very extended.
43:54There are thousands and thousands of people buried in there.
43:59People wanted to be buried near the person that was called to be a saint.
44:06They were all packing into the same area, and by doing this they dug and dug in different
44:12levels also. We find some of these catacombs being four or five levels and being extended
44:18for really for miles.
44:21These passageways tell tales, stories of spirits, of saints, and of all those who came before us.
44:32Death's inevitability hangs heavy here.
44:36It's stunning and humbling to stand among the remains of so many lives.
44:42Most of the tombs are very simple.
44:46They are just excavated into the walls of these galleries, and they are just closed
44:52normally with pieces of marbles and bricks in a very poor way.
44:59Some others are much more decorated and painted, and this was depending on the people that
45:06were buried.
45:09Disorientation is shockingly easy down here.
45:14Many have lost their way.
45:17These poor souls failed to heed the warnings and spent their final hours roaming the labyrinth.
45:28I began to study this place and I discovered that it was very complicated.
45:36Professor Elisabeta Jastrabowska is the foremost authority on the catacombs of San Sebastiano.
45:43She has spent years deciphering its mysteries.
45:47If you have the monuments of art, like sarcophagi or paintings or mosaics, you have to study
45:56it also deeper and to understand what this sand could mean and what is the symbolism
46:05of such a sand, so it takes a bit of time.
46:10The best known catacombs are Christian.
46:13Others are Jewish.
46:15Many are pagan, easily recognizable by their symbolic nature paintings.
46:20Figures of Medusa provide protection.
46:24Peacocks symbolize immortality and richness.
46:28The grapevine, everlasting life.
46:31Wine was the liquid of life, of life forever, not only here on the earth but also afterwards.
46:41Wine was especially prominent during funeral banquets, a ritual held at the gravesite of a departed loved one.
46:50They ate fish and bread and they drank wine.
46:55This habit was so familiar and so dear, I think, to people at that time,
47:05that in 4th century many Christians, they took part of such banquets.
47:13Rome protects its secrets.
47:16To explore underground requires special skills.
47:20But the public is welcome to tour a select few of the buried spaces.
47:25San Clemente.
47:27The Roman houses under the church of San Giovanni e Paolo.
47:32The cryptobaldy in the National Monument.
47:34San Clemente.
47:36The Roman houses under the church of San Giovanni e Paolo.
47:41The cryptobaldy in the National Museum.
47:44Città dell'Acqua.
47:46The catacombs of San Sebastiano.
47:51Each location offers a unique look at the lives of ancient Romans.
48:04The study of Rome and its undergrounds will be for sure a never-ending story.
48:10You will not know what you are going to discover tomorrow.
48:15You don't know if you are going to find really something important, archaeologically speaking.
48:22But you are going to discover something.
48:25You don't know if you are going to find really something important, archaeologically speaking.
48:33But the important thing is that we will go always forward
48:40and we will add something to what we know today and we will know for sure more tomorrow.
48:49This city reveals its secrets slowly, one excavation at a time.
48:55Treasures are still hidden underground,
49:00even under ancient sites we know about, such as the Roman Forum.
49:06You see today one form of ancient Rome,
49:10but underneath the pavement, underneath those monuments that you see that are so impressive,
49:14there are other Romes, there are older Romes,
49:16going back layer upon layer to the time of the kings.
49:19And very soon we hope to participate in a very large project,
49:24an excavation that will reveal many of those monuments
49:27and give back to the public, give back to the world a lot of that history
49:32and really understand much more, more than we have ever known before,
49:35about the lives of the Romans, their contributions,
49:38what they did right in the heart of the ancient city, right in the Roman Forum.