San Clemente church was built in the 1200’s and a priest who lived there kept hearing running water at night when it was quiet and he couldn’t sleep.  No one else could hear it and they thought he was crazy.  One day, for whatever reason, he started chipping the plaster off the wall in the back of the sanctuary and found two sealed up archways.  He called a friend who was an archeologist excavating the Coloseum and the friend said, ‘Wow! There is something behind these arches.’  And it wasn’t the gift shop like it is today!!  It was the remains of a 4th century church.  So, they dug out tons of dirt and found frescoes and rooms and passageways and the tomb of two men…one being St. Clement. They knew it was a church but couldn’t find the altar which should have been there somewhere.  They could still hear water running, but couldn’t find it.  So they excavated even more and found the remains of a 2nd century church and the running water which is park of the acquaduct system of Rome which has been there for thousands of years.  And it is still running today…as strong as ever.  Bringing fresh drinking water to the city of Rome.  You can still drink water from any of the hundreds -probably thousands – of drinking fountains in Rome today.  Constant running water.  Well, back to the church.  They the. Found the remains of a Pagan temple along side the  2nd century church.  Found the pagan altar…but where was the Christian altar from the 4th century?  Lo and behold….they discovered that the 4th century altar was upstairs in the 12th century church, where it remain to this day.  As we kept going down to each level of the excavations of the church, you realize that they were at ground level and ground level keeps going down.  They believe there is something below the 2nd century church at San Clemente.  And there is something under almost every street and building in Rome!  Case in point is the new Subway line they are building…for 26 years.  When something is found, digging stops, and the archeologists come in and tell the diggers if they can continue digging or must move the line around whatever they have found.  The two previous subway lines just plowed right through destroying no telling what because the Archeology and Ancient Ruins Department (or whatever it is called) wasn’t established then.  If you can find a copy of James Mitchner’s book, The Source, it tells of the different levels of civilization in Israel.  

After San Clemente, we went to The Bone Church.  It is located on Via Veneto and was the home of Capuchin Friars.  One of the Friars was the brother of a Pope and asked his brother for some of the family land to build a new church for the Friars as theirs was old and drafty and crumbling.  They built the present day church and then dug up the bones of three thousand of their fellow and dearly departed brethren and wheeled them across town to the new church.  Rather than reburied, the bones were used to artistically decorate the walls and ceilings of the small chapels in the crypt.  Walls of skulls with niches for clothed skeletons, star bursts of leg and finger bones, and clavicles etc.  Every evening, the present day Friars walk the corridor and visit their departed brethren and pray in one of the five small chapels.  There are some regular burial plots in the floor and I assume that is where they are now buried when they die.  There is a very new and very nice museum attached to the bone church now, telling the history of the Capuchins which is an off shoot of the Fransiscans, founded by St. Francis.  After this wonderful tour, we met our friend, Kimberly at our favorite Lebanese restaurant for a delicious dinner.  We all liked this one.