Roma Aurea: Searching for the City of Gold

This talk begins with a curious episode from late nineteenth-century Rome and the charismatic, internationally renowned Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani. In his notebooks, preserved in the Biblioteca Vaticana Apostolica, Lanciani included lectures that he gave, in both Italian and English, about the possibility of discovering “hidden treasure” in the city. His lectures apparently fascinated tourists like an otherwise unknown woman named Sidonie Rose. She wrote in English to the famous archaeologist to tell him that she had used a “diving rod” where Lanciani’s lectures suggested that the treasure could be found. Ms. Rose included a sketch of the location with an “x” marking the spot, and she expressed hope that they would meet again after she returned from a trip to Florence. We can’t say for sure whether they ever discussed the treasure again, but Lanciani carefully pasted her letter into his notebook along with his own enigmatic jottings about the treasure. 

What brought together one of the world’s most famous archaeologists and an Anglophone tourist traveling with a “diving rod”? Why did they both think that “hidden treasure” could be found? The answers to these questions lead us to consider Rome’s future, especially following World War One, as well as Rome’s distant past, a city praised by Roman authors as Roma Aurea, the City of Gold. 

Jason Moralee, Professor of History, UMass Amherst