WHY ROME?

Rome is the largest archaeological site in the world, its center still defined by the twelve mile circuit of defensive walls built in the 270s A.D. Beneath the traffic-ridden streets of the modern city lie the vast remnants of the ancient one, which sources say reached a population of a million people. This is a greater population than the center of the city has today, a greater population than any city of the world reached again until the nineteenth century.

After the removal of the capital to Byzantium in 330 A.D., Rome fell into a decline from which it was not to recover. It was the time of the great tribal migrations. The Gothic barbarians were pushed into southwestern Europe by the Asiatic Huns, who brought the Han Dynasty of China and the Sassanid Persian Empire to their knees. The aqueducts were cut during the Gothic sacks of 410 and 476, the Egyptian grain supply intercepted by brigands raiding the Mediterranean shipping lanes. The civic administration of the city broke down, and the great temples and public baths fell into decay. One day the fire department disbanded.

Centuries of darkness ensued. The population shrunk to an estimated twenty thousand plague-ridden gnomes huddling in the Campus Martius, the once-grand ‘Field of Mars,’ flood-plain of the Tiber and site of some of history’s finest monumental architecture. These ‘Dark Age’ remnants of the formerly proud and powerful populace began to take shelter in the dilapidating structures, building cave-like hovels into the porticoes of temples, the arcades of theatres and the great circuses.

Threatened with imminent destruction by the Islamic Saracens and seeking material for their weapons foundries, the Byzantine emperors sent armies to Rome to strip the bronze roof tiles from the temples and dig the structural iron from the buildings. The venerable edifices were left prey to earthquakes and ongoing spoliation. With the city under the jurisdiction of the early Roman Church – a backwards and often barbaric institution with neither the funds nor the municipal infrastructure to maintain it – run-off from the hills and the constant flooding of the Tiber caused ground level to rise. And with the increasing loss of knowledge that characterized this decline, certain of the generations existing in the post-apocalyptic city came to believe that it had been built by a race of prehistoric giants…

The remains for ancient Rome has been built into and over for centuries. Founding the walls of palace blocks and the wine cellars of restaurants, ripped through with water mains, sewer systems and subway tunnels, only 7% of the ancient city has been excavated. Few people realize how much of it is still there, and still waiting to be discovered. Yet when the sun sets over the domes and the iron bells begin to toll, there is a certain feeling, an echo of a world which founded our own. For what was literally true in Classical Antiquity is symbolically true today; and this is why we come – because all roads lead to Rome . . .

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