Travel with Rick Steves · Saturday, September 12, 2026
For centuries, ancient Romans broke down marble from grand structures to create kilns for producing concrete and mortar. This practice, driven by necessity, led to the destruction of many of Rome's most impressive buildings, leaving gaps in historical understanding.
“And for centuries, I just learned this last year. They had kilns set up on the sites of the greatest buildings of ancient Rome. And for centuries, they would break up the marble, feed it into that kiln and turn it into material that could be used for some crude kind of concrete and mortar to build buildings in the Middle Ages.”
“And these kilns, they literally chewed up and munched up and dissolved ancient Rome and today it's, it's built into medieval buildings that we don't really pay attention to.”