ABCNEWS.com: Rome Struggles to Ready Itself for 2000

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DISNEY MILLENNIUM

THE CENTURY

Turn of the Roman Century
Preserving the Past, Preparing for Tourists

S U M M A R Y

Thirty million visitors will travel to Rome for New Year’s 2000, presenting a challenge to a city struggling to preserve sacred antiquities while preparing for next millennium.

World News Tonight

By Jim Wooten
ABCNEWS.com
R O M E, Oct. 6 — It’s just another day in Rome: 2 million cars, 700,000 scooters, 10,000 faithful at the Vatican, and 40,000 tourists in the piazzas.
    For Rome, it is also only 85 days before the new century and the New Year when 30 million visitors are expected.
     Double the usual crowd, double the usual chaos — plus one colossal headache for Mayor Francesco Rutelli, whose preparations are often caught between his city’s ancient yesterdays and its hectic tomorrows.
     “Rome had one million people in the second century after Christ, and it was a very wide territory where people were living,” says Rutelli. “So, today, wherever you dig, you find something.”

Too Much History?
With hundreds of construction projects around town, there’s a lot of digging going on. In a tunnel being dug for a new parking garage, the ruins of a house is found that may have belonged to the Emperor Nero’s mother.
     Archaeologists insist the tunnel must stop. One of them, Claudio Mocheggiani, is uncompromising about preserving antiquities: “We try to find a way,” he says, “but it’s a continuous battle.” The planners say there is enough history in Rome, but not enough parking space.
     In fact, though, the past almost always wins — and in Rome, with 3,000 years of history, the past is everywhere, layer upon layer.
     “You mustn’t impede progress,” says archaeologist Sylvanna Rizzo, “but when we find ruins, the traffic stops.”
     And that, combined with the Pope’s open invitation to every Catholic in the world, promises one unholy mass in this city, which, though it wasn’t built in a day, probably won’t ever be ready for next year.