Underground Rome: Vicus Caprarius

Before digging into the underground site Vicus Caprarius, we’ll discuss town planning in ancient Rome. How large was Rome and what was its population in the first century B.C.? What criteria did ancient builders use to develop this area? And to what extent was plumbing part of the plan? Then we’ll descend under the Cinema Trevi and discover ancient Rome in all its glory. We’ll discuss two apartment buildings that date to the Emperor Nero’s reign and may be part of his strategy to renovate Rome after the fire of 64 A.D. They are currently the oldest insula (apartment blocks) to have been uncovered in Rome. The mind boggles! Despite the fact ancient city was rife with towering tenements and middle-class housing, very few of those buildings have survived!

Now skip to the late first century A.D.! Rome had a Director of Water Works, who was in charge of maintaining the city’s 11 aqueducts. One of the directors, Frontinus, writes in his treatise De Aquaeductu that different pipes “distributed the Virgo’s water throughout the seventh, ninth, and fourteenth regions, thanks to 18 tanks” (Book II, 84). The distribution tank in the underground site Vicus Caprarius is the only tank of the 18 to have been found in Rome… See it with your own eyes!

The apartment buildings’ transformations in late antiquity are also surprising. During an enemy invasion in the 6th century A.D., the buildings burned. Their collapsing walls caused ground level to go up. It’s an amazing phenomenon that occurred all over Rome. But here it becomes tangible.