Fight to save the crumbling walls of Rome
The massive wall that has defended Rome for 1,600 years is crumbling fast. Used in places as a rubbish dump, it is starved of vital maintenance funds – because no one takes any notice of it.
Built by the emperor Aurelian in AD271, it runs for eight miles around the centre of the city and once linked 383 towers that provided a vital lookout for Roman sentries. Today the ancient barrier is flanked by office blocks as it snakes through the city, ignored by residents and in danger of collapsing if 42 million euros is not found for its upkeep, Claudio Parisi Presicce, Rome’s archaeology superintendent, said.
‘‘It is bigger than the Colosseum, but since the wall stopped protecting the city it has simply been forgotten,’’ he said. It is a sad fate for the brick-clad concrete wall, which stands 15m (50ft) high and 3m thick in places, and is topped by a crenellated walkway above an internal corridor that gives access to arrow slits.
Built in a hurry in only five years by Aurelian as barbarians first crossed into Italy, the wall stood strong through centuries of papal rule before being abandoned after the Italian state was created in 1861. Now it faces a threat deadlier than siege machines from rain infiltration, earthquakes and, not least, caper plants, which send roots deep into the cracks. In 2001 an 18m section partially collapsed and this year a 14m stretch close to the British embassy partly gave way after being rattled by vibrations from last year’s earthquakes in the mountains above Rome.
‘‘The city tried to find sponsors to pay for maintenance but no one applied. It seems the walls are invisible,’’ Luca Bergamo, the deputy mayor, said.
One short section where the Appian Way leaves Rome through an ancient gate has been turned into a museum where visitors occasionally meet dogs scrambling up on to the walkway from adjacent private gardens.
A group of Roman activists is now trying to get more sections opened to the public. ‘‘This is Rome’s biggest monument. Instead of being left to ruin, it would be a perfect place to do a high line walkway, like on the disused elevated railway in New York,’’ Annabella D’Elia, an activist, said.
Where Via Veneto passes through a gate in the wall, restorers have used a 1.7 million euros grant from the city to repair huge cracks along a 300m stretch, removing an old municipal water tank and a toilet and bedroom installed by a squatter. Soon visitors will be able to walk where Roman sentries once stood, and look down over Via Veneto, where Hollywood stars gathered during the Dolce Vita era in the 1960s.
‘‘It’s a start, but without 42 million euros we won’t know where the next collapse will be,’’ Mr Parisi Presicce said.