Disappointed in Rome

On a recent visit to the Eternal City, I suddenly remembered a BBC report from about six months ago. “Rome’s Metro C has uncovered spectacular Roman ruins”, the report claimed, “and the new ‘archaeo-stations’ are giving visitors a whole new way to experience the city’s ancient past”.

The fragments — as the wall-art at the Metro station of San Giovanni proudly announces — tell a story. So, having purchased our 8,50EUR daily tickets, what kind of story were we treated to?

Work on the new underground line, Linea C, has actually been on the go for over 10 years, as it gradually approached on an existing route from Pantano in the south-eastern suburbs, arriving on the outskirts at the Linea A station of San Giovanni in 2018.

Linea C is planned to traverse the centre of Rome, as the very visible building sites at Piazza Venezia, Castel Sant’Angelo, and Ottaviano in Pratti attest.

I was particularly excited, as I knew that the area around San Giovanni had accommodated, in ancient times, the fort of the emperors’ horse guard. (Specifically, the castra nova built by Septimius Severus to supplement the nearby castra priora, when he increased the size of the unit.)

Surely the additional excavation connected to the new Linea C must have uncovered military remains?

Sadly, my visit drew a blank. I found two or three display cases with nondescript unlabelled stonework, and a looping video about the discovery of a Roman farm. (That’s the video screen in the background of this photo.)

Currently, the line ends at Colosseo on Linea B, which was opened about a year ago. However, a visit to this “archaeo-station” was just as underwhelming as San Giovanni.

The central feature is a well of some sort, and a display wall presents various small domestic finds of Roman and earlier origin.

One of the objects is a length of lead piping stamped ANTONINI AVG RVF LIB FEC (“ Rufus the freedman of the emperor Antoninus made (this)”), but no details are provided.

Not to be outdone and ever intrepid, on the following day, I dragged my long-suffering spouse on a fresh odyssey in search of the intervening station and latest to be opened, at far-flung Porta Metrovia, slap-bang above the nova castra. Here, surely, we would see some evidence of the daily life of the emperors’ horse guards. Weapons, armour, dining equipment, and so forth?

Astonishingly, we couldn’t even find any display cases here!

As if to rub salt in the wound, the wall-art (in the photo above) showed a plan of the excavation trench in which the troop commander’s house had been found. As we made our weary journey back into the city, we reflected on how close we had come (or not) to experiencing the city’s ancient past and the emperors’ horse guards. And how long it would take to order two proseccos.