That rascally fig tree

We have one serious enemy in our attempt to preserve the spring chamber and spring gallery of the Aqua Traiana.

More stubborn than the nuttiest old archaeologist, more rapacious than the Emperor Trajan himself, is a certain damned fig tree, sitting adjacent to the ‘church’ chamber itself, from where it sends its roots down into the ‘spring’ chamber or ‘water capture’ chamber and down into the aqueduct.

The spring chamber was lined with rock-hard waterproof hydraulic cement, and that cement was painted with Egyptian blue paint - paint which gives us a sure and certain date for the construction of that chamber.

Unfortunately, since the spring chamber was drained, there is now a layer of roots between the painted roman cement and the structure of the wall.

Fig trees are one of the greatest enemies of ancient monuments.  The day that your doctor told you that eating figs is a great source of Calcium and gives you strong teeth and finger nails, you might have guessed that fig tree roots absorb lots of Calcium from the soil.  You’d have been right!

Root-tips are covered in bio-films which help them absorb mineral nutrients, and through that film, through either clay or hetrotrophic bacteria, H+ Hydrogen Ions are exchanged with Metal Ions, such as Ca2+ Calcium Ions in mineral fragments.   It’s called Bio-mobilisation.

So those cheeky fig tree roots have been busily sucking all the Calcium out of the rock-hard hydraulic cement, so that it’s no longer hard at all.  In fact it’s distinctly friable and crumbly.  Recently, we had to keep our mouths closed and grind our teeth as we watched a VIP guest break off a big chunk of the hydraulic cement and crumble it between his fingers.

We would like to see the Roman Hydraulic-Cement preserved.  It is a significant technical component of this unique remaining example of roman engineering, and if we lose it, we also lose the Egyptian Blue paint – which was so expensive that it proves that this location was a place of great importance.

So a key question is how to preserve this hydraulic cement or ‘intonaco’.   It is possible that the live roots are currently holding the intonaco in place.  Eventually the destructive fig tree needs to be removed, but if we kill the tree and the roots die, the intonaco could just drop off the walls and crumble on the floor.

Two days ago I met the young owner of the site for the first time.  He is eager to clean up the place, and be seen to take good care of it.  He wants to cut down the fig trees – in fact, he may already be doing so.

To stop and think, or to go for it?  To be or not to be?

To take a chain saw to that cheeky old fig tree, or to leave it standing?

That is the question.

Going to meet the owners

It's Tuesday 2nd March, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, and I've got my first appointment to meet the owners of the Aqueduct Spring source that we announced in January.   I'm kind of scared and on-edge, and I've asked a representative of the local archaeological society to come with me.

The Aqueduct Source is hidden 'under' a church in a wood in agricultural land north of Rome, and whilst we've been there many times before with the local council representatives and water engineers, we've never so far actually met the owners, which I feel is a bit lax.

My personal preference for many months has been to try to ingratiate ourselves with the people who have been taking care of the beautiful monument for so many years and go there with their permission, but unfortunately, we have visited here previously with people who tend to ride roughshod over them.

Today, hopefully, we're going to change that.   I have an appointment at 18:00 with either the owner's son or grandson, I'm not quite sure which.

We shall see!

The Old Spiral Staircase

The old Spriral Staircase curls down for twenty-five metres into the eery space beneath the city of Rome, where archaeology and ancient tunnels have laid undisturbed since a forgotten time.
Peering down from the top as we prepared to film the aqueduct, we saw the shimmer of the purest water rippling yellow-gold lights right in the centre of the stairway where the ancient Aqueduct passes beneath.

But the entrance to the Pincio “Snail” as the Italians call a spiral stairway lies only sixty metres from a well known landmark where millions of tourists pass each year. At the top of Rome’s well loved Spanish Steps, adorned with young couples taking photos and giving roses, there is an impressive villa called Villa Medici. And to the side of the principal entrance to Villa Medici is a small door with an engraved stone: “Alla Chiociola del Pincio” – to the Pincio Snail.
The Aqua Virgo always passed across the Pincian Hill at the back of what are now the Spanish steps, and recently, since it was re-built and restored in the sixteenth century, a distribution tank was built there, which supplies, under pressure, many of the best known ornamental fountains in renaissance Rome, like Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s Barcaccia in the adjacent Piazza di Spagna and his Four Rivers fountain in Piazza Navona.
Many of the wealthiest visitors to Rome take time to go shopping in via dei Condotti, right opposite the Spanish Steps. Here they find Gucci, Yves San Laurent, and many fine boutiques, but few of them know that via dei Condotti means the street of the conduits, and beneath their feet, lie pipes laid by the great renaissance architect Giaccomo della Porta in the 1500s to bring the water from the ancient Aqueduct to great renaissance fountains.
Half way down the Chiocciola there is a strange, unexplained chamber – and here we took the opportunity to put on our waders. Then as our speleologist, Marco Placidi gave the go-ahead, we lined up at the bottom of the stairway, and jumped the one metre and a half drop into the specus of the aqueduct and into the cold, fresh water.