Rome's Invisible City

Rome

for 1,000 years

the beating heart of the ancient world.

Capital city of the most powerful Empire on the planet.

But this iconic cityscape tells only halt the story.

Every modern city is served by it's underground spaces.

2,000 years ago, the Romans got there before us.

Deep beneath Rome's glorious domes

and columns lies a secret underground powerhouse that

made life possible for a million citizens up above.

I love Rome. Of all the places in the world this is my favourite.

Every time I visit I find myself just newly bewitched by

this fantastic ancient city.

But this time I'll go beyond the surface world that

the tourists see and the archaeologists scrape at.

I'll be digging deeper to explore a whole new invisible world deep

underground that reveals how the first metropolis was built and run.

Wow. It leads down eight storey's.

Xander, are you all right down there? Fine.

'I'll be working with a team of experts who'll use the latest

'technology to reveal this secret underworld.'

Look at this.

That's incredible. Look at the detail.

'We'll explore the underground engine rooms that built

'and powered the extraordinary world above...'

Everything that made Rome tick is coming along these passageways.

'...the hidden wonders below the Coliseum that made it the greatest

'and the goriest show on earth.

'And in long-lost labyrinths we'll uncover underground cults.

'This invisible treasure trove will reveal the secrets

'of the world's most remarkable ancient city both below...'

I've never been in a sewer before. I hear it's great!

'... And above ground.'

Welcome to invisible Rome.

Now, this is enormous fun.

I used to drive one of these for about seven years in London.

My wife made me get rid of it when we had children. Why?

Did she think it was dangerous or something?

Anyway, this is the best way to get around Rome.

If you've been around Hyde Park Corner

getting around Piazza del Popolo is going to hold no fear for me.

Here we go. Let the dog see the rabbit.

I've always loved this city.

Ever since I was a child and my grandfather used to read to us

from the legends of ancient Rome. I even had my honeymoon here.

Who could resist the majesty of the Forum, the Coliseum

and St Peter's Basilica?

But now I'm going to dive into the underground spaces

we don't see on the surface to discover exactly how

the underground powered the first metropolis.

My walking Wikipedia for this exploration of invisible Rome

is Dr Michael Scott.

Michael's been coming here for 15 years to study the city's

amazing monuments.

And where better to start our journey into Rome's

underworld than in its largest and most famous building,

the Coliseum.

It opened in 80 AD, just as Rome reached the height of its powers.

Look at that.

'For 500 years, it hosted a gladiatorial carnival of combat

'and carnage.'

So, Xander, welcome to the Coliseum. Wow!

This is where you hear the roar, isn't it?

Something like 60,000 people on seats all around us...

60,000 in a city of a million is a significant percentage, isn't it?

All baying and shouting loudly for what was going to take place

right here on the arena floor.

And this place opens with 100 days of games.

And can you imagine what it must have felt like to be standing on the arena itself?

And the noise, the wall of noise of the people all around.

'Standing on the arena floor gives me

'a spooky sense of the spectacle that unfolded here.

'But to understand how the Coliseum really worked

'we have to go down into the bowels of the beast.'

This is called the Hypogeum

It just means underground space.

There's a tunnel that goes all the way out there

and that leads to the gladiator school. Right.

So we're walking in the footsteps of the gladiators

who would have been coming into the Coliseum.

A tiny proportion of who might get to walk back that way, as well.

Yeah, there was also an exit to the morgue.

'These tunnels aren't the only hidden secrets of the Coliseum.

'Beneath the stage was a labyrinth of holding pens and lift shafts.'

Well, if I show you.

This is the arena floor, this is the bit above us, right.

There would have been these holes that opened up, about 40 of them,

and these correspond to these tunnels that we're looking at directly.

Underneath each of these, we can start to see the mechanisms.

These crumbling ruins were once at the cutting edge of technology.

'In the central corridoor, sloping rails guided monumental

'scenery up onto the stage above.

'On the other side, numerous lift shafts, disgorged animals

'and humans to their deaths in the arena.'

Can you see that hole in the ground, the central hole? Yeah.

That's probably the hole where a capstan pole went up two floors

and had big arms so that two teams of men could turn it

and that would be used as a winch to lift cages.

How incredible!

These lifts would have been big enough to take anything up to a lion.

These animals would just magically appear.

This would have been a sea of machinery, toil, effort , noise.

The animals starved so that they were extra hungry

when they got out there onto the arena floor.

You know, I've been backstage in a lot of theaters

and the atmosphere backstage, particularly with a big show,

nothing as complex as this, but, you know, you've got people

running around with clipboards getting terribly panicked.

I guess it you times that by 100...

It these guys down there, the guys operating the machinery,

the guys calling the timing, got it wrong, they could find

themselves not running the spectacle but being the spectacle!

They were the next ones on. The next ones to be fed. Blimey!

It's not just about not getting a bouquet of flowers at the curtain call. No.

It's just so macabre, isn't it? The spectacle ultimately is death.

'Over the lifetime of the Coliseum, it's believed that up to

'500,000 people and one million animals were slaughtered here.'

To have something like this right at the heart of Roman life,

it smacks of a certain hedonism spiraling out of control, slightly.

There was nothing out of control about this environment.

The Emperor paid to put on these games to demonstrate his power,

his control.

He did it to ensure, that the people,

the mob of Rome in some ways, were on his side.

How do you keep the people happy?

You feed them, you keep them entertained. Bread and circuses.

Stopping them giving him trouble.

A none too subtle way of saying,

"You stick on side or else it'll be you hanging out of the lion's mouth!"

I think if I'd just seen this above ground,

I'd have seen the spectacle, the scale.

I'd have thought of this as a piece of bravura architecture

but then you go below stairs...

You get that horrific macabre sense of this being a machine

that spewed people out to their certain deaths.

'After the underground world of the Coliseum,

'I can't wait to see what more this worm's eye view

'can tell me about the rest of invisible Rome.'

'But first, time tor a more modern traditional Roman pick-me-up.'

You can come here and see so much of Ancient Rome

up on top of ground. The Coliseum is a perfect example.

You knew the Coliseum. I did. I had seen it, visible Rome.

Visible, Ancient Rome is all around us

and the thing that really excites me about this is we have got to go back underground.

If we want to really understand how Rome became the amazing city it did.

We are going to be working with a team of 3D laser scanners,

cutting edge technology. This is very exciting, indeed.

That is going to, for the very first time in Rome,

be mapping some of the underground spaces we are going into,

in a level of detail, texture, colour that has never been done before.

OK, so I can get my head around that, of course, underground,

one accepts that a great deal going on under there.

How do we get underground?

We're going to be walking through the streets of everyday Rome and

just there's going to be something completely that you'd pass by without

even noticing, access points for us to the world of invisible Rome.

This is like the Time Bandits.

Sometimes it might be slightly more complicated,

You're not claustrophobic, are you? No.

How's your abseiling?

Abseiling?

You brought the Flavia.

I don't drive a Vespa...

'So, now I'm buzzing with expresso,

'I'm ready for invisible Rome to reveal itself.

'I'm hitching a lift with the Prof.'

'How do we know what's there? I mean...

Sometimes we need some kind of like natural disaster

to uncover a bit of underground Rome that we didn't even know existed.

'It seems the city is so peppered with undiscovered subterranean spaces,

'that people and buildings just keep falling into sinkholes.

'We're on our way to the Aventine Hill,

'one of the seven hills Rome was built on.

'According to legend, it was founded by brothers Romulus and Remus,

'who were suckled by a she-wolf in a cave close by.'

Now, we're going to see a little sink hole.

'Marco gets the call when random bits of the city

'disappear into the ground.'

Look at this!

What actually has happened? This collapsed in the night.

When one of these people go in the morning to work,

and found this situation.

It's gone. I'm assured that it is man-made.

Man-made? Yes.

So Marco, how many sinkholes like this appeared last year, let's say?

Last year, we have 80 sink holes.

80? 80? Eight zero?

We have many more already.

'Michael isn't suprised that Ancient Rome is devouring

'so much of the modern city.'

There was a city of one million people in Ancient Rome.

The population density was ten times what London is today.

There is so much still to find

and it's moments like this that open new windows.

So when something happens like this, it's sort of God-given opportunity

for archaeologists to roll up their sleeves and have a sneak peek.

It's very exciting.

'Marco has got a lead on what's causing the trouble.

'It's just around the corner.

'This is where our 3D scanners will start revealing