Comment by al_borland
8 hours ago
I visited Rome last year. There was a lot of talk about how long it was taking to build a new subway line, because they kept running into ancient artifacts. It was also commonly said that the city was like a lasagna, with layers upon layers of history under everything. Building that were originally built elevated are now at street level.
It almost seems hard not to find ancient ruins. It then becomes a question of priorities and resource allocation.
If they're so common, why not incorporate into the construction project?
Walk through a modern subway, see bits & pieces of ancient history all over the place. Buy icecream, sit on a bench that labourers hacked out of stone 2ky ago.
Because it's more expensive and takes longer (which then makes it even more expensive).
Which is why ancient ruins in construction sites are often covered up, unreported, or even destroyed.
> If they're so common, why not incorporate into the construction project?
If it's the same one I read about, they did.
I visited Athens in 2006 shortly after the Olympics were held there and the city had been refreshed. The Syntagma Square subway station did exactly this, with layers of archaeology revealed behind glass as you descended the stairs. It was magnificent!
They do do that? https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20260408-a-150-metro-tick...
That's actually done a lot in ruin-heavy cities. For instance, here's a Lidl with bonus underfloor Viking village in Dublin: https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/aungier-street-lidl-arch...
Reminds me that story about the beach table in Bulgaria, that turned out to be a 1,700-year-old Roman tomb: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article2...
I mean, it's the rest of the subway line thats the problem -- how many ancient sites do you tunnel through to reach the next stop?
I thought the buildings getting lower was just the ground compressing. The foundation is solid, but the ground underneath still compresses. There are circumstances like Seattle where they literally built up the city, but those are less common
No. The ground does not usually significantly compress under those loads. Remember for much of human history buildings are build with wood and non vitrified bricks that readily break back-down into mud/gravel/organic matter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tell_(archaeology)
My obvious thought is why not dig deeper to build the subways?
I’m not sure how deep the new one is, but some of them I went on already seemed extremely deep. I felt like I was on escalators for a long time, and multiple tiers, to the point I was Googling what the tallest escalators were when getting back to my hotel (Rome didn’t make the cut). There is definitely a cost to going deeper, in construction, ongoing maintenance, and the experience for the rider.