Archeo-stazione di San Giovanni, linea C di Roma, o dell'archeologia pubblica

In the contemporary city, is the subway station a public place or is it an atopic space with no relationship of identity to the city it serves? Is it a basic utility structure or can it aspire to be something else? For several years, international architectural culture has been questioning these issues by creating stations that seek to express site-specic solutions. From this point of view, archaeology, which for years was considered an unfortunate setback every time it reappeared during the excavation of a building site, is now becoming a stimulus to the creation of specic spaces. Archaeology as history concealed underground in Europe’s historic cities is painstakingly changing its meaning and value. Despite this change of paradigm, there have been few cases so far in which the archaeological question has become a real resource: an instrument capable of transforming the substantial atopic condition of metropolitan hypogea. The construction of the San Giovanni station on line C of the Rome underground was the rst case of restitution, through the arrangement of the internal spaces, of the archaeological data, conceived as the foundation for the identity of the entire station space. Getting off the train tracks or walking up to the city becomes a journey through the history of the place in time and space, displayed in a binary narrative of texts and material presented graphically with an exhibition of archaeological finds.