Rome is rising!

One thing we are always struck by in Rome is how the ruins are always way below street level.Over better than two thousand years, the city has kept tearing things down, filling in space with rubble, and building new structures. With this, the city has gradually risen. The beautiful Pantheon, the best preserved of any Roman temple, was built on a hill but is now in a bit of a depression:The ruins near Piazza Navona are over 30 feel below the current street. Here is Leslie Ruth standing at street level, nearly at the top of the remains of a high arch.Where the rise in street level is the result of a volcano covering everything with ash or lava, as in Herculaneum (this was a seven story building)this is easier to grasp. But it is hard to believe how Rome has simply risen up by human demolition and construction over the centuries.

The Basilica of St. Clement is a good example. A couple of thousand year ago, there was what was probably a private residence, next to a building which was associated with the mint. Some rooms in the residence were dedicated to a pagan god, Mithras, with a feast room (interesting how many religions have meals as part of their traditions) with an alter and an adjacent room where the remains of the feasts were, as part of the rituals, discarded.

In the late 300s, as Christianity became the official religion, the cult of Mithras was banned. The shrine area was filled in with rubble, and a basilica dedicated to St. Clement was built over the previous mint and shrine of Mithras.

Over the centuries, the basilica deteriorated. Its columns were embedded with masonry to strengthen them and the resulting walls were decorated with frescos.

In the early 1100s, the old basilica was filled with rubble and a new basilica was built on top of it. Historians differ as why this was done: some say the old basilica was damaged by a fire in the area which historians know of; others say the old basilica was associated with a contender for the papacy who fell from favor (the so called anti-pope). At any rate, the current Basilica of St. Clement is an edifice built in the 1100s on top of the original.

Over the centuries, the original basilica was completely forgotten, and everyone thought the current edifice was the original one built in the 300s (an error of about 800 years!) However, one of the Dominican priests at the basilica in the 1850s, Fr. Joseph Mullooly, was interested in archeology, and began the excavations which revealed the actual history of the site. He could only do so much work before he ran into drainage problems, but the work continued after his death, and today you can descend from the current basilica into the 4th century basilica and see its columns and frescos. You can then descend even further into the original Roman shrine of Mithras. It is amazing to see what lies under the current basilica, which is at today’s street level.

We visited there yesterday; our third or fourth visit. I’d post photos, but photography in St. Clements is not allowed, a prohibition we regret, but respect.