Inside Hidden Rome: The National Geographic special edition on the Eternal City
National Geographic doesn’t do things halfway. So when an editor from NatGeo publications approached us about writing an entire special edition magazine about Rome — 90 pages of archaeology, history, and travel, exploring the city’s buried past, secret stories, and hidden gems — the answer was obvious.
Rome has been written about for centuries, but there is always more to say. More to uncover. More tucked-away corners, buried layers, and unexpected stories that most guides never reach. Hidden Rome is our attempt to get there — championing the city’s old and new, its expected monuments and its about-to-be-revealed surprises, through the combined lens of a travel journalist and an archaeologist who between them have spent decades exploring it.
It’s also, as it happens, a full National Geographic moment for Darius. While we were deep in the writing and editing of Hidden Rome last fall, he was simultaneously filming Pompeii: Out of Time with Tom Hiddleston as the expert archaeologist — a secret he kept for eight months. The documentary debuted on Disney+ just one week before Hidden Rome hit newsstands, which was a very happy coincidence.
How do you boil down Rome to 90 pages?
It seemed impossible. It was also, as it turned out, an extraordinary challenge.
The process began with a month of outlining – deciding what absolutely had to be included and, harder still, what had to be left out. For Darius, an expert in ancient Rome, every omission was a small act of professional anguish. For me, the goal was clear: capture the glorious collision of contemporary and ancient that makes Rome the beautiful, maddening contradiction it is.
Four months of writing, rewriting, fact-checking, and editing followed. The result is a book we’re genuinely proud of , and one that our daughters have made us swear never to repeat in quite the same way.
Hidden Rome is now on newsstands, in bookstores, and in supermarkets. If you spot it in the wild, take a photo and send it to erica@ericafirpo.com — we’ll share it on Instagram.
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