Rome by Water: Trevi, Vicus Caprarius and the Pantheon

A private tour with one idea running through it: water, and what a city does when it has enough of it. It starts at the Trevi Fountain, which the guide treats as a text rather than a photograph. The figures, the symbols and the arrangement all say something specific about Rome and its water supply, and once that is pointed out the fountain stops being decorative. Then underground to Vicus Caprarius, the City of Water. This is a Roman residential block several metres below the modern street, with the channel of the aqueduct still running through it. Walking those rooms is the clearest available answer to how ancient Rome actually worked day to day, and almost nobody in the square above knows it is there. Back up and a short walk to the Pantheon, which belongs to the same story from the other end: engineering as an argument about what is possible. The guide covers how it came through the fall of the empire intact. The meeting point is Via in Arcione 119, in the small square in front of the supermarket.