Rome Underground: The World Beneath the Eternal City

Rome has a new attraction. For the Romans themselves and for tourists who want to experience something less usual. In the park of the Via Appia, on the south side of the city, an immense complex of subterranean passages – known as the Cava Romana (Roman Grotto) – is open to the public. With Rome Underground you get the chance to explore the world now onder experience the Eternal City.

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The Cava Romana

The history of Cava goes back more than 2.000 years. Rome, the capital of a gradually expanding empire, grew rapidly and so there was a great need for building materials. In addition to tuff and marble, this was mainly pozzolana, volcanic earth that was crushed and mixed with water and slaked lime to form firm cement.

Within the city itself, which grew into a metropolis with more than a million inhabitants in the first centuries of our era, the stock quickly ran out. Therefore, in the 1^e century BC began excavating the hills outside the city, which were formed by volcanic eruptions some 600.000 years ago.

One of the largest quarries was the Cava, which extends over an area of ​​one by 5 kilometers with more than 35 kilometers of underground passages.

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The carved out corridors were abandoned when in the 5^e century the Roman Empire fell, the capital emptied and the ancient monuments provided enough building material for the few remaining inhabitants.

In Renaissance, when Rome experienced a second period of growth, and after 1870 when it became the capital of the newly founded Kingdom of Italy, excavations continued to provide pozzolana for the nearby neighborhood of Esquilino.

This came to an end around 1910 after the then owner started using bulldozers and turned out to destroy Christian catacombs, which led to protests from the church.

From mushroom farm to escape cellar

In the 30s, the Cava was used as a nursery for mushrooms (mushrooms and pleurotus) that thrived in the constant darkness, coolness and humidity of the artificial caves used as air raid shelters in World War II.

After the mushroom farm stopped, a less high-quality phase followed in the 70s and 80s, when the Cava was used as a storage place for stolen cars that were dismantled here and then sold the parts. At that time, the area around the ancient Via Latina was considered a criminal area where you should certainly not venture after sunset.

That situation has now radically changed. The neighborhood has been spruced up, the huge, well-maintained landscape park of the Via Appia is a green lung where city dwellers and visitors can spend hours wandering in nature, and now the Cava has also reopened after 30 years of closure and neglect.

This is mainly due to the Associazione Roma Sotterranea, the Association Underground Rome, a group of enthusiastic volunteers who have carried out a gigantic cleaning operation in recent years.

President Marco Placidi recently presented the result to a group of foreign journalists during a 2-hour tour through more than a kilometer of dimly lit corridors.

It soon became clear that the work in the pozzolan quarry must have been no fun, which was therefore left to slaves, the so-called fossores (diggers). In the walls of the corridors you can still clearly see the marks left by the pickaxes with which they made their way through the volcanic rock.

Shallow niches cut into the wall indicate the places where the slaves could eat their bread: there was no dining room for them and the way had to be kept clear for the 2-horse drawn carts with which the chipped pozzolana was transported.

Touching is a small low corridor of which only the beginning has been carved. Experts can see that a 7 or 8 year old slave boy worked here and that this was probably an exercise to learn the trade.

Darkness

And all this in the twilight. Small niches at man's height were intended for luceraria, antique oil lamps, which everyone who walked into the corridor had to make do with. To live that experience, Placidi asks all participants to turn off the flashlights handed out at the entrance, after which he leaves his room in pitch darkness. lucerarium ignites.

The flame flares up high and his face is clearly visible, but the entire surrounding area remains black and no one regrets it when the flashlights are switched on again. At a certain point, the corridors widen where a bulldozer made its way at the beginning of the last century. In some places it broke right through ancient catacombs.

(In the first centuries of the Christian era, side tunnels were sometimes constructed at right angles to disused mine galleries for more or less clandestine Christian graves. After Emperor Constantine the Great put an end to the persecution of Christianity in 313, this was no longer necessary and could the dead are buried next to the church.)

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In one place the catacomb has been walled up relatively recently with a stone wall. By order of the Vatican, our guide explains, to prevent miscreants from entering the catacombs from the mines to rob the dead of their measly grave goods.

(For those interested: The Vatican was able to do that because according to the Lateran Treaty, the 1929 agreement between Italy and the Holy See, the Catacombs of Rome are Vatican property and as such fall under the authority of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Art. .)

More recent past

Remains from a more recent past can also be seen in the corridors: plastic bags filled with soil in which mushrooms were grown, a (obviously subterranean) dining room for the employees of the nursery and a vintage truck from the 40s (model Guzzi Ercole), used to transport the harvest.  

A heap of rubble in a side passage collapsed during the 2016 earthquake that devastated the town of Amatrice and in several places pieces of white stucco, applied during the time of the mushroom farm, have come loose from walls and vaults.

As a result of working above ground, Placidi explains: 'There is farmland twelve to fifteen meters above us and when harvesting is done, the combine causes vibrations that can cause some to fall down here. In consultation with the farmer, we therefore do not organize guided tours during that week.'

Roma Sotterranea has big plans to make the Cava Romana a top attraction: an Indiana Jones-esque scavenger hunt for kids; a caving course for adults; bike rides through the entire underground maze; and replicas of classical monuments and events.

As an example, a short corridor has already been set up as a Mithraeum, a sanctuary of the Persian god Mithras who also lived in Rome in the 2nd century.^e in 3^e century was popular. It is a faithful copy in bright colors of a real Mithraeum that was excavated in the nearby town of Marino, with music to match.

kitsch? Perhaps, but it is nicely done and when the guide tells the story of the god, the bull and the sun cult, the children will also be fascinated.

Practical information Rome Underground

The Cava Romana dell'Appia Antica is open on weekends and public holidays from 10am to 19pm, with guided tours in several languages ​​(including French, German and English).

Reservations are necessary and the duration of the tour can be determined upon request. Discuss via info@sottoraneidiroma.it or via mobile no. +39 347 3811874. See for more information www.sottoraneidiroma.it.

The Cava is close to the entrance to the park of the Appia Antica on Largo Pietro Tacchi Ventura, easily reached from the Colli Albani station of the Metro A (the 'red line').