Rome's New Metro "Archaeological Station" - "Archeo-Stazione" - its newest and best free museum

Travelers in the San Giovanni metro station amidst artifacts from ancient Rome.

Everyone agrees Rome's 21st-century infrastructure is deteriorating to a new low - piles of garbage in the street, holes in the asphalt big enough to close streets and kill motorists, buses catching on fire, tram brakes sabotaged, parks unkempt, trees falling on cars.  And yet, one can enter a Metro station and be in a first-class archaeological museum that opened this May.

Under this very ordinary Metro entrance
lies an incredible museum.

The expansion of Rome's Metro system to a third (!) line, the C line, resulted, as almost all excavation in Rome does, in the discovery of layers of ancient artifacts.  In this case, the discoveries at the connection of the C line to the A line at the busy hub of San Giovanni in Laterano held up the inauguration of that station by a couple years and in the process opened a window into centuries of Roman life.

Artifacts discovered under the station at this level (more photos below).

Because the station was so deep, archaeologists had the chance to reach depths they don't normally work in. As a result, they used the depth of the station to provide a timeline.  As one descends into the basic 3 levels of the station, the panels on the walls and the artifacts reveal the time lines at those depths.  It's a clever way of showing human, and pre-human, history.

At the top, times for the next trains arriving.  On the wall, an indication that we are 14 and 15 meters (45-50 feet) below current Rome and in the "Middle Imperial Age--third century AD."
Also noted is the year 216, when construction began on the Baths of Caracalla.

One of the most interesting discoveries was of a 1st-century BC water system, on a farm it appears, with pipes made from used and broken amphorae.

A 1st-century BC plumbing system (more photos at the end
of the post)

The station, which opened May 18, has been an enormous hit primarily with Romans.  It may take time for tourists to catch onto this - in reality - marvelous free or low-cost museum.

A central hub - travelers going through the station, and video displays on the right.

The first level is before the Metro turnstiles and thus is free.  But for a 1.50 euro ticket, anyone can travel down to the other levels of the station. The free level has very good videos, in both Italian and English.  The second level is the most rich in artifacts.

Dianne

The escalator going to the bottom level takes one down through time.
On the right it says "Republican age" and then "Proto-historic age."

The lowest level does not have artifacts, but has pictures on the
walls of the kind of life that existed on earth (in Rome)
at this level of feet below the current level of Rome.

A Roman delighting in her 'find.'

Pipes from the 1st century BC plumbing system
(and Bill's hand and camera reflecting in the glass)

The discovery of broken amphorae used to create a pipe
in the plumbing system.

An end piece from the side of a Roman house.

Amphorae

Amazingly enough, the remains of a wooden basket--
1st-2nd century BC.

Metro C: A Great Idea with Human Costs

Rome desperately needs more underground transportation, and the city is making an effort to provide it.  The current project is Metro C, designed to connect Rome's eastern suburbs with the central city, and to connect stations along its 18 km route to existing lines A and B.  Stations on the eastern part of the C line have been completed and are operational; we've walked that route and shown our readers some of the new stations and neighborhoods they serve.

The inner-city section, where the all-important connections with other lines will be made, is under construction.  When completed, there will be a new Amba Aradam station at Porta Metronia, serving a large and heavily populated neighborhood (one of our favorite places to live) to the south and east of the Coliseum, with completion to the Colosseo station and Metro B.  The C line will also connect with Metro A at San Giovanni.  The completion date for these connections is 2022.  And there may be a station under Piazza Venezia, if it proves possible to do the work without destruction of too much Roman heritage.

The plan sketched above seems reasonable, and we're looking forward to riding the fully-automated line, assuming we live that long.  In the meantime, those who live near or adjacent to the construction route face years of irritation and disruption: noise, of course, and traffic problems caused by re-routing, but more important, hundreds of yards of tall metal Metro fencing, sometimes within a few feet of apartment buildings that not so long ago were adjacent to small parks, a tennis club, a soccer field, and a portion of a Roman wall.  In short, Metro C has its human costs.  That said, when the work is completed, residents of adjacent areas will have some of the best Metro connections in the city.

A few months ago we toured the construction zone near Porta Metronia. The tour begins at the porta and runs southeast down via Ipponio, turns left at a nameless, curving street just beyond via dei Laterani, and left again on via della Ferratella in Laterano.  Here we go.
Bill

From Porta Metronia

Down via Ipponio.  A tennis club at left escaped the construction--for now.

Inside the yellow walls

Yellow walls outside your door.  Trees inside and outside the construction zone.

Turn left here for the hospital and the church. Sure. 

Looking back.  Pedestrian crossing.

This one's particularly depressing.  

This used to be a nice street to walk on, to a supermarket.  

Eugene Debs, the American socialist labor leader?

Headed back toward Porta Metronia.  The sign says the parking spaces are reserved for motorcyles (and scooters, no doubt). Romans are adept at marking things off with tape. 

There's a Roman wall on the other side of the yellow wall.  

One of the pleasures of a walk like this is reading the posters.  This one says Dino, hands in the air, was shot and killed by
a police officer.  

A small park, largely intact despite the construction, close to Porta Metronia, where we began.

Rome's New Metro Line: Walking the Walk.

The pristine travertine stairs and escalators at the Lodi station, on its pre-opening day tour

On June 29 Rome's transit system accomplished what many thought it might never do - it opened new Metro line C with 6 stations.  In theory line C had been opened earlier, further out of Rome, but that was just a refurbishing of an above-ground train line already in existence.  The 6 stations and 5.4 kilometers of track opened recently are the true accomplishment, because they actually put line C IN Rome, rather than way outside of it.

Men in Black

We took advantage of a rather unusual offer in late April. The 6 newest stations were open a few hours on April 29 for self-guided tours, even though there were no trains running.  To see them all, one had to drive or walk between them.  So we made it our goal to do a 6-station trek, and back.  We figured, oh, 5+ km x 2 - we had to get back to our moto without the metro, of course - that's only 7 miles and we're used to that.  Oh, how wrong we were... but for now to the features of that day - the stations.

The line is billed as from "Mirti" to "Lodi" because the outer part of the line, the old train line, is already operating.  But Lodi is the most central of the Rome portion of the line - to date. The line still doesn't hook up with either of the other 2 operating lines - A and B, but it will when the San Giovanni station is added in, supposedly, 2016.

A visitor checks out the line - it's the part in red we're visiting.

So we showed up at the "Lodi" station - named for its proximity to Piazza Lodi - at noon, when the stations were to open.  Well, we were 5 minutes early.  So you can see the guys in black blocking the entrance until the appointed hour. And it turns out, guys in black were at every station, being very one-might-say fascist-like in ordering the few people coming to see the stations which way to go in and out, protecting fenced areas, and the like.  Part of the ambiance of the day.

Lodi is undistinguished from the outside.  It has only surface level entrances.  Below it has some of the grand travertine staircases and it looks wonderfully shiny new, of course.  So we dutifully walked down all the levels, and up, and marched on to the next station.

Pigneto station skylight, outside

Pigneto comes next, and this is a long-awaited station in a rapidly gentrifying, even hipster neighborhood of Rome.  Pigneto's station is more interesting, with an enormous skylight.  And here we learned about the "TBM", "Tunnel Boring Machine" (yep, that's Italian) used to create the metro openings below ground without opening up the ground from the surface and then

skylight, inside

recovering it, as Rome has done for prior lines.

Display photo of Pigneto station under construction.

This process minimizes the problems of archeological finds.  As former Mayor Rutelli put it to us once, one can dig at 35 meters, but not between 15 and 35 meters.  Of course, since it's Pigneto, we were treated to lots of street art as we came back up and started our walk to our third station, Malatesta.

Leftist graffiti in Pigneto

Dianne interviewed by radio reporter at Malatesta station

Malatesta is one of the more elaborate stations. That's the reason, we assume, it was selected for Mayor Marino's visit.  So it was full of people. Enough so that a radio reporter interviewed me, in Italian, on my reactions to the new stations. And our timing was good enough that Bill got a photo of the mayor.

Photo op for mayor (red tie) and cohorts.

Unlike the other stations, this one had a train car open to visit.  Helps to have the Mayor around.  It was here we learned from the instructive panels that this line is "driverless" (again, Italian).  Whoa, that's a bit scary.

Inside the cars

"Data (I Numeri) of the "Driverless trains"":
80 km/hr maximum; 35 km/hour normal; 1200 passengers
per trip; + or - 30 centimeters - leeway in terms of where
they stop at the stations.

Open stairs lead down into the Malatesta station

Walking out of the Malatesta station to the next one, Teano, we were reminded that, yes, old Rome still exists.

We passed some old medieval-like buildings, towers, agricultural land, and then a pretty strange building for Rome.

Opera sets were stored here.

We read later it was built in the 1950s and stored opera sets and costumes!  It's been repurposed partly as a school and community center.  And, across from it is perhaps the most interestingly-designed station. The ATAC Web site tells us that the "atrium" is meant to be used for commercial activity and cultural events.

Teano station

Atrium for commerce and cultural events, Teano

The prosaic Gardenie station.

1930s public housing in the far-flung suburbs.

The 5th station, Gardenie, again is ordinary. Outside it we were reminded that the Fascists built public housing out this far in the 1930s, sending workers far away from where the jobs might be, and sending any potential challengers to the regime out of communication with the city.






















We ended up at Mirti in Centocelle, a once disparaged suburb of Rome that is reviving a bit, and certainly the metro line will help that.

That's a victory sign at Mirti, as well as storm clouds brewing.

 Besides having time to give the victory sign, we found a tour group in this station and we learned more about the entire project (including the use of the TBMs).

Tour group at the Mirti station.

At this point, we figured we probably had walked close to 10 miles - the 5.4 km is the way the Metro or crow flies.  Walking between stations is much more circuitous.  Plus we went up and down the stairs at each station (the escalators weren't operating). And it was starting to rain.

Dianne checks the various transit options.

Walking another 4 or 5 miles back to our moto was ruled out.  While celebrating our 6-station triumph with a glass of wine in Centocelle at a familiar bar there, we discovered the "trenino," or urban train, was not far away.  So we walked over to it, through the familiar non-glitzy underpass of existing Rome transit, to catch the train back reasonably close to "Lodi" and our moto.

What the 'normal' transit underground looks like.

The Italians are good at design, and these stations are striking in their pristine state.  We don't want to think what they might look like if the graffiti artists get busy on them.  This project connects some of these far flung suburbs and we hope makes Romans living in them feel more in touch with the city itself.

Video in the station teaching kids to hang on.

We'll do a check in 2016 to see how the system is progressing.


Dianne

Study in black and white