Despite its grandeur and expansive domain, Rome also had a dark underbelly.

Such was the case with the land beyond its Eswellin Gate, which is said to have been built sometime around the 6th century

BC by the Roman king Servius Tullius.

A few decades before the birth of Christ,

this affluent region became home to Rome's first heated swimming pool, which was constructed on the

Esqueline Hill. Eventually this area would become home to some of the wealthiest people in the world,

an immense expanse of luxury villas and parks.

Yet paradoxically, from the earliest days of Rome and for many centuries,

this area outside the gate had become a place where the bodies of executed criminals and slaves were dumped.

Vultures flocked overhead in massive numbers, feeding on the rotting flesh of the bodies

piled high in a lengthy ditch.

So prominent were these scavengers that they even had a name, the birds of the

Esqualin.

The area remained so foul and stench from years of rotting corpse as that when the Romans

sought to build their gardens and heated pools many years later, laborers choked

on the fumes. Birds roam for decades after the reclamation began.

Fragrant gardens were constructed in an attempt to mask the deeply settled odor.

The world's most exotic and aromatic plants were imported to mask this nauseating scent.

For the Romans, one of the most prominent forms of execution at places like the Escaline Gate was crucifixion.

Of Crucifixion, author Tom Holland writes, even as seedlings

imported from exotic lands began to be planted across the emerging parkland of

the Esqueline, these bare trees remained as a token of its sinister

...