All of us Romans, happen to be jealous of the metropolitan transport networks of other capitals and cities abroad, even if doesn't mean we forget all the treasures our city owns .

Most of us citizens of the capital dream of being able to move "underground" fast and efficiently, perhaps living in a neighborhood full of green, away from traffic, but from which you can reach the center in a flash, adding that pinch of modernity to the impressive hystorical treaures surrounding us.

However, it is necessary to state that the mere presence of an underground transport network, here in the Eternal City, represented a considerable achievement, a leap towards the future that the engineers, technicians and workers who worked there have achieved by solving problems seemingly insurmountable, that most other capitals do not have.

A subway officially arrived in Rome in 1955, and to be exact on February 9 of that year.
At 10.15 that morning, the first train of what we now call "Line B" leaved Termini Station to reach EUR.
An interesting tip: on board the inaugural train, among the authorities joining the President of Republic Luigi Einaudi, there is also the Minister of Transport of the time, Bernardo Mattarella, father of our current President.

The inauguration trip to EUR is not a random choice: the underground transport network, in fact, was conceived in the 1930s precisely to connect Termini Station to the site of the Universal Exposition E42, which then could not take place due to the occurrence of the events of the Second World War.
Of course, for the same reason, the construction of the subway is also interrupted, t in order to be resumed after a decade.

Rome, in the complexity of the stratifications that have occurred for twenty-seven centuries, is a vulnerable city.
The idea of running convoys under sites such as the Colosseum or the Circus Maximus has presented very complex problems since the very beginning of the project, and of course the constant probability of unexpected and exciting archaeological discoveries.

In this context, already complex in itself, it must be considered that, from the earliest years, the network was equipped with convoys capable of easily reaching 70 mph per hour which, equipped with comfortable and soft green leather seats, stood out for their modernity, if compared to those of other contemporary subways.

After the inauguration of 1955, the development of the underground transport network continued in the following years, with various projects concerning the line that from the Prati district leads to Cinecittà, through the intersection of Termini.

In view of the 1990 Soccer World Cup, Line B was refurbished and extended up to Rebibbia.

Later in the 1990s, after the extension of line B, line A was also put into service, which was extended to the current western terminus of Battistini.

And here history takes us almost to the present day.
The dream of a fast Rome is always alive, even if the times of realization - if compared to those of other European cities - are necessarily slowed down not only by the continuous archaeological finds, but also by the bureaucratic result that each of them inevitably entails.

In fact, when a company working on the line is faced with a new archaeological discovery, the law obliges it to stop the works to allow the intervention of the committies for conservation of cultural heritage, and this inevitably ends up extending the times of realization in an indefinable way.
We are in a city that has no equal in the world, and all this is part of its destiny.

Pending the project to create lines C and D, the archaeological investigations that the project itself involves continue to reserve daily surprises.
Just think of Piazza Venezia, where for years they have been trying to create a coveted station, but where even the bowels of the earth continue to return all kinds of preciousness of the past centuries and millennia.
The same goes for Via dei Fori Imperiali.
And the critical issues don't stop at archaeological sites alone!

While the projects, in their first draft, took into consideration a passage of the line under the riverbed of the Tiber, it was recently discovered that about sixty meters below the historic Capitoline river a second underground river flows, mysterious and with abundant flows, and this forced the planners to permanently set aside the sub-river section, while studies are underway at the Roma Tre University to make this generous stream an alternative power source capable of bringing heating from natural sources to Roman homes.

Therefore, many conquests have already been made to equip this city with a transport network comparable to those of the most modern capitals, even if - objectively speaking - all the situations mentioned above lead us to think that a capillary coverage of the city could, perhaps, be seen by the grandchildren of our grandchildren.

But this does not scare us and does not surprise us: in Rome everything is evaluated with the millennia unit of measurement.