The Italians do not charge an entrance fee to the antiquities but have difficulty financing their preservation
John Hopper, Guardian
The Colosseum in Rome. The palaces of the emperors Tiberius and Nero are in immediate danger
Rome. Those who board a taxi in the port of Fiumicino in the capital of Italy, and travel into the city, will find themselves, at one point or another, in front of one of the most impressive sights in any European capital: on the other side of the Circus Maximus stand the remains of the palace of the cruel Roman emperor Septimius Severus. However, since the sixties, the palace has been closed to visitors and today the site is neglected and dirty.
The reason why no one under the age of sixty has seen the most impressive classical remains of ancient Rome up close is that entering them is too dangerous. "Look up," said Giovanna Tedona, an architect working for the city's Antiquities Authority, pointing to a huge crack in the stadium's southern wall. "All that's missing is for some plant to get there, or some ice, and the wall could collapse at any moment."
Everyone has heard of sinking Venice, but only a small circle of academics is trying to save the crumbling walls of Rome. Due to the lack of adequate funding, the ancient center of the city is crumbling beyond repair. However, recently the issue has gained a new urgency due to climate change. Last November, a 16th century wall collapsed due to torrential rains on the Palatine Hill, an increasingly common phenomenon in Rome.
Angelo Bottini, the government's chief archaeologist, said one of his first reactions was to contact the meteorologists. "They confirmed to me that the weather in Rome is getting rainier and that last winter was the rainiest so far," he said. The collapsed wall raised a worrying question in his heart: Can the rain cause the collapse of an apparently stable 400-year-old wall, what could it do to two-thousand-year-old buildings whose stability is in doubt?
He hired the services of a renowned structural engineer, Giorgio Croci, to determine which buildings were in danger. "We don't even know if the structures that look stable really are," said Prof. Bottini.
Instead of demolishing unwanted buildings, the Romans used them as foundations for new buildings. Therefore, many seemingly strong buildings may stand on shaky foundations. While the authorities are waiting for the experts' report, rescue work has begun at two sites that are in immediate danger. One, the palace of Emperor Tiberius overlooking the Forum; the other, the palace of Emperor Nero, behind the Colosseum.
There is an important source of funding for the conservation works, but the government decided not to use it. The entrance to the Forum complex and the Palatine Hill is free of charge - which makes the visit to the place the most profitable tourist transaction in the world. No one knows the number of visitors, but it is estimated that there are ten thousand to fifteen thousand people a day. If this is the case, and if they had charged one euro from each visitor, it would have been possible to raise more than 15 million euros every year, three times the existing budget for the preservation of one of the most important sites bequeathed to us by the classical era.
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