Unearthed in Rome’s New Subway: Extinct Elephants and Persian Peach Pits<br />At the San Giovanni station, which is expected to open early next year, archaeologists found bits of ancient capitals, decorative marble elements, petrified peach pits from ancient Persian cuttings<br />and 16th-century terra-cotta plates from a nearby hospital.<br />So it seems apt that a modern engineering achievement — the construction of a new subway line in the city<br />— has given archaeologists a unique opportunity to study this ancient world in extraordinary detail.<br />A certain amount of documentation exists from the Line B excavations, Ms. Rea noted, "but we don’t have anything from Line A." A glimpse of what may have been lost underground was captured by the<br />imagination of the director Federico Fellini, whose 1972 film "Roma" includes a segment about the building of the subway in which roomfuls of frescoes disintegrate when they are exposed to air.<br />Naples, by contrast, has been featuring renowned contemporary artists in its subway system to create what one critic described as a "catacomb of beauty."<br />When the station was opened to the public for one day last April, the response was overwhelming, a sign that Romans are keen to rediscover their past.<br />At one of the sites last December, Ms. Morretta came across tracts of one of Rome’s oldest aqueducts, which is now being studied.<br />Another significant find was a military barracks from the second century, found during<br />the construction of the Amba Aradam station, which is expected to open in 2022.
