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Not on Facebook, but still want to know what’s going on in the Eterna?  Then you’re sure to find a link or two below that will appeal:

• Bruno Heller says he wants to produce a theatrical wrap-up to his critically beloved and prematurely canceled HBO drama “Rome.”  Oh please let them make a Rome movie!

• The Aurelian Wall is a bit less sturdy than was thought.  There are fears for the future of Rome’s ancient Aurelian walls after chunks collapsed.

• Bldgblog.com visits the Crypta Balbi Museum near Largo Argentina and describes it as “a city-block-sized core sample of Rome, threaded through with staircases, tunnels, and elevated walkways for visitors.”

• The New York Times provides a schedule and some details about usually-closed monuments in the Forum and Palatine that are open to the public this summer.

• The Timesonline.co.uk reviews David Watkin’s new guidebook to the Roman Forum and gives it two thumbs up, saying, “More successfully than any writer before him, Watkin makes his reader aware of the multilayered, fascinating history of this unique site.”  We’ve been passing the book around the Compound for the past few months and we concur.

• At SeriousEats.com, Gina DePalma shows us how to stay cool this summer by doing as the Sicilians and eating ice-cold gelato, granita, and sorbetto for breakfast.  Oh yeah!

• The NYTimes has an article today about the Euphronios Vase, now on display at the Villa Giulia, and Vernon Silver’s new book, “The Lost Chalice: The Epic Hunt for a Priceless Masterpiece” which they rate as a “first-class page turner documenting the stolen krater’s travels from ancient Greece to Etruscan Italy to New York and then back here — and of the travails of another work also by the sublime Euphronios.”

• Trenitalia cancelled their lost and found service.  That struck everyone in the eCool Compound as hilarious.

• Restorers working on Michelangelo’s frescoes in the Pauline Chapel at the Vatican claim to have found a self-portrait of the artist.

• The Pope announced that bones in a grave excavated at San Paolo fuori le mura belong to St. Paul while archaeologists announced that the oldest known representation of St. Paul was recently discovered in the catacombs of St. Tecla on Via Ostiense.  All that news came as the Vatican’s Year of St. Paul drew to a close at 29 June.  Make of that what you will.

• Venice got its first female gondolier.  Brava!

• Smithsonian Magazine covered the work of French amateur archaeologist, Bruno Tassan, who’s fighting to preserve a neglected track of the ancient Via Aurelia in Provence.

• Awwww cute.  The Rome Zoo (aka Bioparco) celebrated after a zebra foal was born there for the first time in over ten years. They named him Primo, but that’s hjust a temporary name and  a more permanent one will be chosen by children who visit the zoo.