The Oldest Sewer in the World

Recently I signed on to give a few talks on subjects near and dear to me for a local "Learning in Retirement" organization.  I do like to tell stories.

One program I am working up for a future date will be "Archeology of Rome - Skip the darned Coliseum!"  I figure I have enough seldom visited odds and ends to natter on for quite a while.  For instance.....lets visit the Oldest Sewer in the World.

The Cloaca Maxima is usually given this title, although to be frank who knows if some over grown ditch in the middle east somewhere actually deserves it.  It is certainly the most famous ancient sewer.

More properly it should be called a storm drain, although the dumping of human wastes into it was probably constant.  It was originally a creek, down in the valley below the Seven Hills.  Said valley would become the site of the Roman Forum, the absolute heart of the Empire but not until one of the Kings of Rome - supposedly Tarquinius Priscus - channeled the creek circa 616 BC.  In early days it was an open channel but by the age of Augustus it had been covered over.  It was big enough that officials inspecting it could travel by boat.  Standing up.

There are a few places in the Forum proper where drains go down mysteriously, presumably still into the Cloaca Maxima.  There is also an access door but they sure are not putting a sign on that!  As you go down stream towards the Tiber there are a few places where branches of the main sewer still exist as open canals.  One section can be seen near the church of S.Giorgio in Velabrio.  A photo of this and a very detailed discussion of the Cloaca Maxima can be found HERE. 

I'd like to have had a tour of the upper stretches but alas, they are almost never possible.  So I had to settle for a peek at the outlet, the spot where the Cloaca has been pouring into the river Tiber for 25 centuries and counting.

A quick internet search will give you lots of images like this, or more likely just a snap from the Ponte Palatino bridge above.  The outlet of the Cloaca Maxima is just down stream from Tiber Island.

But in my quest for archaeological knowledge I don't let the little things get in my way. Wobbly, unserious fences for instance. Hobo encampments for another.  Here we have the outlet up close.  I understand that this is pretty new....only around 100 BC.

And a peek inside.  It looks remarkably like a brewery cave but I suppose there are only so many ways to build a vaulted structure. There is still a trickle of water going through it.  But the days of the Cloaca Maxima doing serious drainage are over...it has been connected to the modern Roman sewer system.  This is probably a good idea, in ancient and even into modern times flooding of the Forum to a considerable depth happened when heavy rains flooded the Tiber and caused back flow.

"When in Rome" you spend plenty of time looking at inscriptions and trying to puzzle out what was going on.  This should properly be applied to modern graffiti as well.  I had assumed that the denizens of this little encampment were part of the wave of migrants that Italy has been seeing in recent times.  Certainly that would be the demographic of at least the visible community of street merchants, beggars and idle folks in the central city.  But with "taggers" it is hard to tell.  "Aziz" and "Abdoul" could just as easily be bored suburban teenagers.  The snazzy race cars...do they represent the epitome of Western Culture to a bunch of new arrivals scrapping to make a living?

The place certainly looks Lived In although nobody was home at mid day.  This may have been by design, there was a big international summit meeting about to begin and among other anti terrorism measures I could certainly see the Italian police rousting everyone out of places like this.  "Move it along.  No, no time to bring your shorts".

I said that visits to the main parts of the Cloaca Maxima were rare but they do happen, for film crews and such.  Here's a YouTube video for you.  Ancient Sewer diving....ah, I can still dream.