A would-be car park in Rome becomes a ‘Garden of the Gods’

There are few phrases more prosaic or uninspiring than “underground car park.”

But it was the construction of just such a facility that led to the discovery in Rome of an archaeological treasure trove.

Engineers who burrowed beneath a 19th century office block to make space for the parking lot stumbled across the remains of gardens, villas, pavilions, and water features that once made up a vast estate built for the emperors of ancient Rome 2,000 years ago.

After eight years of excavating the site and five years of cataloging the tens of thousands of artifacts that were found, the collection has now been turned into Italy’s newest museum and will open to the public on Nov. 6.

Inviting visitors to an enclosed underground space would have been unthinkable just a few months ago, during the tougher days of the coronavirus pandemic.

But as life in Italy cautiously returns to normalcy, what was once an ancient retreat of rulers now beckons as a modern-day refuge for everyday Italians.

And as optimism returns, the museum serves as a poignant reminder of what the country has endured, and overcome, since facing the first lockdowns in the West in the spring of 2020. The office block above the Roman remains happens to be the headquarters of an association that provides insurance to Italy’s doctors and dentists. The new museum has been dedicated to the many who lost their lives to COVID-19.

“This place of beauty symbolically honors all the medics who were victims of the pandemic. Our thoughts are with them,” says Dario Franceschini, Italy’s minister for culture.

Doctors had put themselves at grave risk “by being close to their patients with an extraordinary level of commitment” during the pandemic, says Alberto Oliveti, the president of ENPAM, the health insurance association.

Among the more striking discoveries that archeologists made are a bear’s tooth and the bones of lions and ostriches. They are animals that the emperors imported from the farthest reaches of Roman territory and shed light on ancient entertainment.

“It would have been like a small zoo. Creatures like bears and lions would have been kept in cages but other animals, like deer, would have been free to wander the grounds,” says Giorgia Leoni, one of the principal architects involved in the project.

“The bigger, fierce animals would probably have been used in gladiatorial fights – similar to the games organized in the nearby Colosseum, but for the private viewing of the emperor.”

Archeologists also found animal remains that attest to the rich diet that the emperors and their acolytes would have enjoyed – oyster shells, sea urchins, and the bones of fish like tuna and bream, as well as mammals such as wild boar and cattle.

A panel in the museum explains that the favorite dishes of the Roman upper class included oyster pie, wild boar steaks, roasted warblers, and thrushes with asparagus.

“This was a very extensive site, full of gardens, statues, pavilions decorated with colored marble, mosaics and frescoes, as well as water features. The emperors even had windows made of transparent glass, which was very rare,” says Daniela Porro, a senior archeological official with the city of Rome.

The complex was built on the Esquiline Hill, the highest of the famous seven hills of Rome. It was originally constructed in the 1^st  century A.D. by a wealthy aristocrat, Lucius Aelius Lamia, who bequeathed it to Emperor Tiberius.

From there, it passed down to a succession of emperors, including Claudius and Caligula.

Extensive gardens would have surrounded shaded pavilions known as nymphaeum, which gives the museum its name – the Museo Ninfeo or Nymphaeum Museum.

Archeologists have also given it another name – Il Giardino degli Dei, or The Garden of the Gods.

Caligula was so enamored of the retreat that when a delegation of Jewish merchants from Alexandria in Egypt came to put their grievances to him, they could hardly get his attention. The emperor spent the whole time directing improvements and upgrades to the gardens and pavilions, classical sources record.

One of the most notorious of all emperors, Caligula is said to have had an incestuous relationship with his sister, to have fed prisoners to wild beasts, and to have made his horse a consul. But Claudio Borgognoni, another archeologist involved in the excavations, warned that classical sources claiming that some emperors were mad, bad, and dangerous to know are not always to be trusted –perhaps another lesson of this era.

 “That said,” he says, “the Romans did hate him for claiming that he was a god and trying to establish a personality cult.”

The archeological find may not give a definitive answer on the emperor’s true nature, but it does shed light on the general conduct of ancient Rome. There are decorative bronze pendants from a bridle used by a cavalry officer, and a delicate doll’s leg, made out of bone, that was once played with by a child. Ink pots and clasp knives have been found, as well as hundreds of coins and fragments of amphorae, jugs, and bowls. The bones of red deer, roe deer, and boar were made into wind instruments and decorative objects. Archeologists found pieces of brightly colored marble that came from all over the empire: the Peloponnese in Greece, Tunisia, Spain, and Liguria in northern Italy.

“The quality of the material offers a unique vision of classical Rome, from its monumental architecture to its sumptuous decorations, its precious as well as everyday objects, the food that was eaten and the animals that were kept,” says Mirella Serlorenzi, the scientific director of the project. “The museum tells us the story of a privileged retreat of the ancient world.”