MUNCIE, Ind.- Nearly a dozen Ball State University architecture and planning students will travel to Italy early this summer to help plan the restoration of an ancient Roman structure.

The project, known as ArkItalia, will give students international experience while helping Rome's city planners and the Superintendence for Archeology of Rome. Working together, they will address some of the design challenges related to restoring the Basilica of Constantine and designing an underground museum in the archaeologically rich area. The students will be in Rome from May 12 to June 16.

"The students will be immersed in another culture and see firsthand the architecture that has influenced much of Western design," said Michele Chiuini, architecture professor and founder of ArkItalia. "Helping restore this ancient structure is a different design theme that will certainly stretch their minds."

Part of the reasoning for constructing a subterranean structure is to display and showcase the architecture and artifacts at their original site. The National Roman Museum supports this approach because it is running out of space, Chiuini said.

The students will help answer questions like how to enclose the basilica's exterior arches with windows, where to put the museum's entrance, elevator and ventilation shafts - no easy task considering they will be working in one of the world's oldest cities.

In Rome, architecture and archaeology are closely related. For example, building a subway is much more complicated when each scoop of dirt reveals artifacts from ancient civilizations. Such challenges kept Rome from building its first subway until 1950, much later than many other European cities, Chiuini said.

In fact, a new subway route will affect the basilica's restoration. The approved mass transit route will have an exit at the Forum, close enough to the basilica that it adds another challenging element for student designers and city planners.

"Everywhere you excavate in Rome, there are ruins," Chiuini said. "Every time something is discovered the project must be stopped. Not knowing what you'll find can impact the cost of any project."

At the same time, the mass transit exit adds another potential gateway to the basilica and its proposed museum. This element captures the project's basic precept that architecture and planning are built on the past, or in this case, dug through it.

Students will see that European cities are literally built over ancient structures and along ancient roads, and they will have to deal with the challenges that practice presents, Chiuini said.

(NOTE TO EDITORS: For more information, contact Chiuini at (765) 285-1765 or mchiuini@bsu.edu.)