ROME—TARGET FOR BOMBERS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 9, Issue 214, 30 July 1943, Page 4

ROME—TARGET FOR BOMBERS

The Problem Is To Hit The New City But Miss The Old

NEws of the first air-raids on Rome, and of the care being taken to avoid the destruction of the relics of antiquity and the religious ‘monuments of the Italian Renaissance, has awakened interest in the location of the city’s military objectives in relation to its cultural treasures. For the question many people will be asking is whether, in spite of precautions, it is possible to destroy the one without destroying the other. We print on this page two maps; the one above showing modern Rome, with its railways and administration centres, and the one on the right ancient Rome, with the Forum Romanum, the Colosseum, and the Pantheon and other Temples. The borders of the two maps correspond roughly (except that the left edge of the "ancient" map excludes portions seen in the other), so that with the help of the bends in the Tiber and one or two other conspicuous landmarks, it is possible to see how the ancient city has been overlaid by the modern one. It will be noticed, however, that many of the cultural relics and religious centres of Rome lie away from what are likely to be the chief object- ives of bombers. For instance, Vatican City lies to the left of the extreme left bend of the river (i.e., Beyond the edge of the "ancient" map), and is about two and a-half miles from the marshalling yards of the Stazione Centrale (approached by railways entering the upper map at its right border). Above and to the right of the Stazione Centrale is a mpo Militaire (milita camp), on the site of the Castra Praetoria (Camp-~ of Praetorian Guards), seen in the "ancient" map, and the modern map also shows that the area about the Central Station is ‘dotted with Ministeries of War, Finance, Labour, Internal Affairs, Public Works and so on. But nearby, on the site of the Baths of Diocletian, stands 7 St. Mary of the Angels, only a few 3 hundred yards from the station, The Colosseum is the conspicuous oval in both maps to the right of the lower bend in the river.