Table of Contents
Garrett Ryan, on toldinstone, answers why ancient Rome sits below later streets. The Curia, turned into a church, needed a door about ten feet up by the Middle Ages and a higher one in the Renaissance. A church inside the Temple of Antoninus and Faustina opens two stories above the old pavement. Windblown dust and weeds are the humble cause. In a mild climate, plants take hold on abandoned roofs, and paintings of the Colosseum show rooftop thickets later stripped away. That living soil, he says, is only a fraction of the rise. Tiber floods, before the nineteenth century embankments, could leave thick silt. Trash piled up as well. The main mass is collapsed housing. A typical block had brick faced concrete and tile over wood. Once the wood rotted, a deep heap sat in the shell, and rain, frost, and earthquakes turned the walls into a mound. A large building could leave a hill. Medieval Romans saved sound stone, ignored broken tile and concrete, or leveled the rubble and built on it.
Key points
- Later doors cut high in the Curia and in a temple church show how far the ground rose above the ancient pavement.
- Dust, weeds, and rooftop plants added soil, but Ryan treats them as a small share of the rise.
- Tiber floods left silt in the streets before the modern embankments.
- Rotten timber and fallen concrete from apartment blocks supplied most of the burial, and large ruins could stand as high as hills.
- Medieval builders reused good stone, left the rubble, and sometimes built on top of the leveled mounds.
Short quotes
Far and away the greatest culprit, however, was debris from ruined buildings.
toldinstone, Why Ancient Rome Is Buried
He names rubble from collapsed buildings as the main reason the street level rose. Watch at 2:18
Video by toldinstone. Watch on YouTube.