Rome's Invisible City - Presented by Alexander Armstrong - As Seen on BBC1 [DVD]

Description

BBC ONE’s 60 minute special Rome’s Invisible City follows Alexander Armstrong and Dr Michael Scott as they explore the hidden underground secrets of Ancient Rome. The show explores Roman infrastructure and ingenuity, by going below ground level. We wade through the icy, crystal clear waters of subterranean aqueducts that feed the Trevi fountain and two thousand year old sewers which still function beneath the Roman Forum today. The laser scans used to map these hidden treasures reveal for the first time the complex network of tunnels, chambers and passageways without which ancient Rome could not have functioned as a city of a million people. With the help of a team of experts using the latest in 3D scanning technology, Alexander Armstrong explores the hidden underground treasures that made Rome the powerhouse of the ancient world. He uncovers a lost subterranean world that helped build and run the world's first Metropolis and its Empire. From the secret underground world of the Colosseum to the aqueducts and sewers that supplied and cleansed it; from the mysterious cults that sustained it spiritually to the final resting places of Rome's dead, the team reveals the underground networks that serviced the remarkable world above. Guided by Rome’s Underground Archaeology Unit, the team is given unprecedented access to some of Rome most astonishing underground Treasures. Access was often complex but exciting - abseiling 20 meters down through a manhole cover into underground quarries or delicately picking their way through water filled tunnels in near darkness. The result is some of the most comprehensive scanning ever achieved in Rome, in an unprecedented level of colour, detail and accuracy.. A truly fascinating programme that takes the viewer off the well beaten track and into those parts of Ancient Rome that we rarely get a chance to visit.