Some describe Roma as a plate of archaeological lasagna (un piatto di lasagne archeologiche), made of layers upon layers of history (strati su strati di storia). Clementina Panella, a professor of archaeology at the Università di Roma “La Sapienza,” views it as a great book of human history (un grande libro di storia dell’umanità). After thirty years of excavations, her team is uncovering the first pages (le prime pagine) of this remarkable story.

The oldest traces (le tracce più antiche) date back to simple huts built in the tenth to fourteenth centuries B.C. (A.C. for Avanti Cristo, before Christ, in Italian). Panella’s dig has centered on the swath of land between the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine, the very heart of ancient Rome.