The group of faculty and students who traveled to Rome during 2014 Spring Break brought home not only great memories, but also the book "Subterranean Rome," which they recently donated to Hewes Library.

"We picked this book because we visited a number of subterranean sites in Rome on this trip," said classics professor Tom Sienkewicz.

The group visited the Vatican Necropolis and Tomb of St. Peter, the necropolis on the Via Triumphalis (also at the Vatican), the remains of the temple of Juno and Janus under the Church of St. Nicholas,  the recently-opened excavations of the Stadium of Domitian (at the Piazza Navonna), the subterranean portions of the Colosseum and the Tomb of the Scipios.

"Most tourists to Rome visit the Vatican, the Sistine Chapel, the Roman Forum and the Colosseum," said Sienkewicz. "On this trip, we made a special point of arranging in advance special tours to subterranean sites at the Colosseum, the Vatican Necropolis and the recently-opened necropolis on the Via Triumphalis. We also found time to explore the remains of the temples of Juno and Janus under the Church of St. Nicholas. But Rome is also full of surprises, and we stumbled upon two other subterranean sites which we did not know were now open to the public: the Stadium of Domitian and the Tomb of the Scipios. So we definitely spent a lot of our time in Rome underground."