Mura Serviane (Servian Wall)

The Sovrintendenza Capitolina describes the Servian Wall as surviving in large blocks of yellow tufa. It dates the oldest circuit to the 6th century BC and attributes it to Servius Tullius, but says most of what survives belongs to the rebuilding of the early 4th century BC, shortly after the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 BC - a dating supported by the use of a particular tufa, tufo giallo di Grotta Oscura, quarried in territory controlled by the Etruscan city of Veii, whose heavy use in Rome must therefore postdate the conquest of Veii in 396 BC. The Sovrintendenza gives the circuit as about 11 km enclosing 426 hectares, and says that from the Porta Collina to the Porta Esquilina, where the ground is flat, an agger of ditch and rampart reinforced the wall. The Sovrintendenza states that the most monumental surviving remains are those beside Termini station, at the former Porta Viminalis - those are in the neighbouring rione of Esquilino, not here. One further stretch, near Via Gaeta and Via Volturno, falls inside Castro Pretorio.