Door under temple ruins opens to quarry bigger than Colosseum
A CAVERNOUS subterranean quarry that was burrowed out of solid rock and accessible through a tiny door hidden beneath the remains of a Roman temple, has been opened to the public for the first time in its centuries-long history.
The labyrinth of chambers was created by workers who extracted thousands of tons of volcanic tuff, an igneous rock used to build churches and palaces in medieval Rome.
The quarry, which is unknown to the vast majority of Romans, lies beneath the remains of a huge temple that was built in honour of Claudius, the emperor who invaded Britain in AD43.
After the fall of the Roman Empire in the 5th century, the temple fell into disrepair, its huge blocks of marble and travertine pilfered for other buildings.
That is when the digging began, as workers burrowed deep beneath the temple complex. The extraction of stone continued until the 17th century.
Pick marks made by labourers as they hacked away in the candle-lit gloom are still clearly visible in the rock surface. In places, they dug beneath the water table and some chambers now contain limpid pools that shimmer turquoise beneath the light of a torch.
The entrance to the hidden world is through a metal door beneath the temple remains and a medieval tower, just up a cobbled lane from the Colosseum. The door lies behind a gate in a piazza enclosed by an ancient monastery and the Basilica of St John and St Paul, which dates back to the 4th century.
Guided tours involving small groups began this summer. Visitors wearing hard hats descend a flight of metal stairs and slither down a slope of packed mud to enter the quarry through a hole gashed out of the rock. They are then led beneath vast stone arches that formed the foundations of Emperor Claudius’s palace, which was 200 yards long and 180 yards wide.
“To have underground this just a few hundred metres from the Colosseum is incredible,” guide Marco Gradozzi told The Sunday Telegraph. “This is a magical place.
“It’s the first time that the public has been allowed to enter. Previously it was only accessible to archeologists. It was gigantic, bigger than the Colosseum, and yet today it is barely known.”