Rome wasn't built in a day: the extraordinary new Colosseum-Fori Imperial Metro station
As the saying goes “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, and indeed it wasn’t. Kingdom to Republic to Empire spans a time frame which was beyond ancient for the ancients themselves.
To pick an example that stands for umpteen, the temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum is said to have been begun by Tarquinius Superbus and to have been completed in the first years of the Republic, as the fifth century BCE dawned. This was, however, merely a primary iteration of a building which was often restored and rebuilt, always on the same site, throughout its active lifetime. That first temple was as hazy and distant an idea as the very kingdom for those who saw the last reconstruction completed in the (probably) early fourth century. Today we see eight towering columns of Aswan granite—heroic survivors still standing.
Rome is, as the epithet has it, eternally mutable; never finished. However last month a seemingly interminable project was completed on the other side of the Forum from where I took this photo, just beyond the arches of the Basilica of Maxentius the tops of which are just visible to the left of the top of the Colosseum.
After twelve years of hoardings and trucks on via dei Fori Imperiali the new station of the Metro C, linking to the existing Metro B and connecting the heart of Rome with the city’s eastern districts, was finally inaugurated. The new Colosseo-Fori Imperiali “museum station” in collaboration with the Parco Archeologico del Colosseo is well worth a visit, even if you’re not planning on taking a train.
Immediately after going down the new escalators from the street (and before the turnstiles), displays include a super video with reconstructions of the Imperial Fora superimposed upon the main drag of via dei Fori Imperiali.
In the nineteen thirties the sledgehammer school of town planning favoured by Mussolini arbitrarily razed through the medieval and Renaissance districts which had grown up around the ancient fora, and eliminated what remained of the Velia, a spur of the Esquiline, which had already been cut into in antiquity. The uncompromising presence of the road makes the piecing together of the Imperial extensions of the Roman Forum rather tricky and this video, now freely accessible to everybody, is extremely helpful.
