Urban Tunnelling—The Challenges of Creating Underground Space in Historic Cities

Urban transport infrastructure provides essential services on which people and society depend. Particularly in historic cities, the construction or integration of underground transport infrastructure needs to address the issues of sustainable and resilient transport and take care of the interactions with the existing built environment. The tunnels of Line C of Roma underground are under construction in the historical centre of the city, in an area of great archaeological, historical, and artistic value. Significant problems connected to the presence of archaeological remnants, the geotechnical characteristics of the soil, excavation below the water table, and the necessity of minimizing the effects on the historical and monumental heritage subsist. This lecture illustrates the methods adopted to evaluate the effects of tunnelling and open excavation on the existing monuments and historical buildings and reports on some of the activities that accompanied construction of the line.