Remains to be seen

It is often said that you can't repair a water main, break ground for a parking garage or dig up a potato in Rome without finding a treasure.

The roots of the Eternal City, which just celebrated its 2,762nd birthday, go deep and are still being unearthed.

When first plumbed in the 16th century, the layer cake underneath the city yielded classical artefacts that helped inform the Renaissance.

Rubble and rewards

Archaeologists visit Rome, wrangle excavation permits and open trenches.

Passers-by see red-and-white-striped plastic tape and piles of dirt but rarely learn what is being sought in the rubble, because when a dig yields an important find, it takes years of fundraising, preservation, public-access construction and scholarly interpretation to open a site to visitors.

As a resident, I often pass excavation sites and wonder what is going on. I recently had a chance when I visited a dig in Aqueduct Park, on the southeastern side of the city, where an ancient water conduit makes a broad bend on its way into the capital.

Since 2006, when the American Institute for Roman Culture began an archaeological dig, the park has yielded treasures: intricately worked mosaics, the head of a deity thought to be Zeus and structural evidence of a first- or second-century bathing complex larger and more sophisticated than any yet found in the area immediately surrounding Rome.

Suburban sauna

Records identify it as the site of the Villa delle Vignacce, owned during imperial Roman times by brick manufacturer Quintus Servilius Pudens.

It is unclear whether the multistorey bathhouse, with its intact Roman saunas, was part of a private villa or a public complex. In either case, the site calls into question long-held concepts about the configuration of imperial Rome.

“To find an urban-style bathhouse in suburban Rome is striking,'' said Darius Arya, the director of the institute.

Covering up evidence

Lacking funds to preserve the dig, Arya summoned an earth mover to cover it, obscuring the evidence of the discovery.

Before doing so, however, he enlisted Gabriele Guidi, an associate professor at Milan Polytechnic, to document the site. Using advanced laser technology, they assembled a virtually enhanced plan of the bathing complex.

That's good news for scholars but of scant interest to tourists.

Arya said that shoring up the site, encircling it with a semipermanent fence and building roof structures to protect it from the elements during the digging off-season, which usually lasts from October-April, would have cost more than $500,000 (Dh1,834,075).

In 2006 and 2007, excavation work at Villa delle Vignacce was underwritten first by the American Express Foundation and then by private donors.

Recently, Arya hoped for support from Rome to keep the site open but city money did not materialise and private funding has dwindled.

Umberto Broccoli, the city's superintendent for cultural heritage, has begun to re-evaluate such work in the Italian capital, pressing archaeologists to find money not just for excavation but for site preservation as well.

Broccoli likened archaeological sites to children.
“It takes a great deal to maintain them,'' he said. “If we can't properly look after them, do we need more children?''

Scant money

The emphasis on preservation includes rethinking the way the city's scant funds are being allocated to high-profile sites, such as Circus Maximus, a chariot racecourse just south of the Roman Forum, known to have been used until 549.

Tourists can visit the site but it has suffered from poor drainage and layers of earth have obscured the original track.

The city has found $2.85 million (Dh10.47 million) to restore the site but only a fraction will go for excavation.

The rest is earmarked for creating a park-like space so that visitors can take a stroll in the footsteps of charioteers.

“Conservation is now coming to the fore in a systematic way,'' said Giorgio Buccellati, professor emeritus at the University of California, Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, Los Angeles. “But it takes money, which is hard enough to find for excavation.''

The public angle

Almost as important as conservation is the process of preparing sites for public visitation.

This entails providing safe access and clear explanations for guidebook-toting sightseers.

Despite diminishing public funds — a 30 per cent cut in the budget of the Italian culture ministry is expected in the next three years — there have been several important public openings of archaeological sites in Rome, including the 2007 debut of the Museum of the Imperial Forums.

One of a 15-member chain of museums overseen by the city's cultural heritage department, it occupies the stunningly restored ruins of Trajan's Market near the Piazza Venezia.

The Romulus ring

And recently, the Italian government opened a series of frescoed chambers in the home of Emperor Augustus on the Palatine Hill.

The fabled Palatine, a precinct of palaces overlooking the forum, is where the city's mythological founder Romulus was born and, thus, Rome's ground zero. Recently, archaeologists announced the discovery of a sanctuary there which is thought to enshrine the tomb of Romulus.

The find is considered noteworthy enough to justify continued digging. But it could be decades before visitors see the Romulus sanctuary.

Unusually heavy rain in December felled trees, flooded sewers and left massive puddles on the Palatine, endangering archaeological treasures.

Safe from the elements

Back at Aqueduct Park, the reburied ruins of the Villa delle Vignacce bathhouse were unaffected by the weather. As Arya said, the best way to preserve an archaeological site from the elements and public degradation is to cover it up.

Be that as it may, the organisation raised enough funds to reopen the dig, though in a different section of the site.

And so, whenever I go walking in Rome, I keep my eyes glued to the pavement, wondering what's down there.

It's maddening not to know but that's an inescapable part of the Rome experience.

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Accessing archaeology

Visiting archaeological sites where digs are under way and tourist access is limited is generally discouraged.

But there are tours and programmes in Rome for people interested in archaeology. Here's a sampling: