Tridentum

On Saturday, Tim took Cora to the park in the morning while Maya did her homework. He swears he wasn't going to slingshot her out of the park.

After Cora had a nap and homework was all finished, we headed out together to check out some Roman ruins hidden away underneath a square in the center of the city. We've walked past the entrance to this place dozens of times (which is a kind of nondescript staircase into the ground on the side of Piazza Cesare Battisti), but we've never gone in. It was fascinating. Buried under 1500 years' worth of buildings and dirt, there are well preserved pieces of the original city (called Tridentum) founded¹ established here by the Romans around the year 50 BC. We learned about how the city's residents lived, what the roads looked like, where the city walls and gates were (even relative to the modern streets), how their homes were heated (and plumbed!), and more. There was a decently long stretch of intact original wall, and a decently long stretch of intact street (complete with discernible cart wheel ruts). We have a nice map and list of even more sites to check out around the area.

Below are Tim's photos, which include photos of the kids frolicking (in a controlled fashion) among these ancient ruins.

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1 Maya insists that "founded" is not a real word, and we've agreed that I should use "established" instead. I've tried to explain about found being both the past tense of "find" and the present tense of yet a different word, but I've only confused her. She keeps asking (sarcastically), "Was the city already here when they found it?" I shall concede that English has failed us here and use "established" instead.