Rome has always been a city of water, we know it well.
Just think of the importance of the Tiber and the Aniene, the ancient aqueducts, the spas, the thousands of fountains, the Cloaca Maxima, the naumachies, the lakes that surround the city, the proximity to the sea, the villas that use water for the whim of wealthy and cultured cardinals, as in the case of Villa d'Este in Tivoli, commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este.
Talking about an aquatic Rome is easy, just look around yourself on a beautiful sunny day.
But .. what happens in the dark?
The darkness and dungeons in the capital reserve the most beautiful surprises.
Today I would like to tell you about something that very few know: a labyrinth of underground lakes in the belly of the Celio Hill, a stone's throw from the Colosseum.
Under the church of Saints John and Paul and the ruins of the Temple of Emperor Claudius, thirty feet underground, in silence and darkness, we can admire the clear emerald-colored lakes spectacularly framed by colored stalactites.
For some years now, a team of speleologists has been exploring this system of ancient quarries, excavated since the 4th century BC, which has an extension of over one mile.
Here the water has a constant temperature of 10°C, 50°F.
Since 2004 an attempt has been made to document this small and very ancient geological world, and among the many emotions that this brings to the people who are dealing with it there is, for example, that of finding the cracks in the rocks where the ancient workers placed their lamps, but also very old electric cables, which remind us how these spaces were widely used as air-raid shelters during the Second World War.
In Rome surprises never end, and we could draw up an endless list of them.
Also under the San Camillo Hospital, in Monteverde, in 2013 an extraordinary underground lake was rediscovered in a twenty thousand square feet cave, thirty feet high, which in the past was used as a warehouse for food to support the needs of the above hospital, while - during the Second World War - the same cave became an air-raid shelter.
Part of these caves were used as warehouses for the hospital itself, as well as air-raid shelters during the Second World War.
It is said that there is a direct connection between this lake and the Tiber.
If, on the other hand, we decide to move to the historic center, we will discover that at the end of the 1930s, excavations conducted in the cellars of the Apostolic Chancellery Palace made it possible to discover a Roman sepulcher, which now lies on the bottom of a splendid emerald-colored pond, under twenty feet of pure water.
A pond that probably formed thanks to the obstruction of the Euripus canal, at the time of the construction of the Tiber walls.
We can, for the time being, stop here.
However, I will soon resume the topic to talk about other aspects of the wonderful aquatic Rome, and about many underground sites, all to be discovered, to go back in time and feel eternal, like our beloved city.
