Rome's Subway Dig 'Slowed Down By The Past'

"As this city begins work on a new, 15.5 mile subway line, massive earthmoving equipment sits idle while teams of archaeologists with tiny spades sift through dirt...Italy's robust preservation laws make it difficult to renovate, remove or otherwise tinker with anything deemed to be of historical significance, and that includes most of central Rome. The laws have protected the capital from newer architectural eyesores but have left it ill-equipped to deal with the stresses of a modern metropolis."

"Rome currently has only two modest metro lines to serve its 2.5 million people, leaving the city's streets regularly clogged with buses, cars and scooters whose pollution coats the historical monuments with grime."

"But successive attempts by city planners to unclog the center by building underground parking garages and tunnels to handle traffic have run afoul of historical preservationists just about every time a shovel has hit the earth."

"More than once, city officials have lost their cool with the preservation office...The standoff held until a few years ago, when planners and preservationists decided to bury the hatchet and work together on the new subway line. To reduce the line's environmental impact, the subway tunnel will be buried more than 80 feet below the surface, beneath even the earliest strata of archaeological remains."

"For the engineers, to work alongside the archaeologists isn't fast -- or inexpensive. The bill for constructing one mile of metro tracks in the center of Rome is more than $375 million, and the project won't be completed until 2015."

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