School administrators say the buried remains of a luxe, mid-Imperial Roman mansion were discovered accidentally (“scoperti casualmente”) in the basement of the students’ gymnasium beneath Rome’s C. Cavour State Scientific High School (Liceo Scientifico Statale C. Cavour).
The adventurous teens had repeatedly stumbled upon this archaeological find, but, regardless, Cavour faculty only reported its existence to the Special Superintendency of Rome about six years ago. Now, after €210,000 ($242,698 USD) in restoration work, this mid-2nd century CE slice of ancient Roman life—once primo real estate, walking distance from Rome’s legendary Colosseum—has finally been presented to the general public.
Claudia Marino, a history and Latin teacher at the high school who first brought the find to the attention of local authorities, said she didn’t take the claims of a buried Roman villa seriously until she heard the story from student activists who occupied the building during a 2021 protest.
“When it was over a group of students told me ‘there really is something under the school,’” Marino told The Times of London. She was inclined to take these idealistic protestors seriously, given the then-alleged find’s location in what was once a central part of ancient Rome—an elite neighborhood Octavian called home before he built his imperial palace on the Palatine Hill as Rome’s first emperor.
“We take our pupils to have outdoor lessons on the Palatine Hill, so they know [what] they are talking about,” Marino said.
Homeowner identified
Marino and archaeologist Filippo Coarelli of Italy’s University of Perugia were able to tell the public last week who exactly once owned this sprawling Roman residence or domus, complete with its ornate mosaics and frescoes.
Fabius Gallus, a Roman senator believed to have once had a controlling interest in part of Rome’s water supply, appears to have occupied the home sometime in the 2nd century CE. An obscure figure named Umbria Albina of the Umbrius family, whose relatives likely originated in the Samnium region not too far from Pompeii, is reported to have also lived in the domus.
Archaeologists excavating the nearby historic street Via degli Annibaldi in 1895 had actually first identified the engraved Roman plumbing, or fistula, that bore the ancient occupants’ names, according to the Special Superintendency of Rome’s cultural heritage project, Cantieri Narranti. But their turn-of-the-century report to the city evidently languished in obscurity until more of the domus was discovered.
More to explore
Although city officials with Cantieri Narranti described the find as remarkably “well-preserved,” their archaeological team noted that much more work needs to be done to fully recover this luxurious ancient home. The residence, located somewhere near the Esquiline Hill, may one day reveal more details about a historically prominent neighborhood once inhabited by famous Roman figures, including Cicero and Pompey.
“The visible rooms, now buried almost entirely, still retain figurative paintings and stucco decorations up to the vaults,” the Cantieri Narranti team noted in their announcement, translated via Google.
“The spectacular preservation of the paintings in these rooms requires them to be emptied to reveal the entire decorative apparatus and allow for its examination,” the city’s heritage project said.
So far, the excavators have uncovered frescos of floral patterns and figures, as well as stucco decorations on ceilings between the arched doorways of the domus. According to Live Science, archaeologists found a mosaic in one room composed of a motley array of large tiles in a “style fashionable among elite Romans in this time period.”
The Cantieri Narranti researchers also found mid-20th century graffiti dating to the 1940s or 1950s, which may have been scrawled by student-spelunkers, locals, or tourists. But, regardless, the tags help confirm the rumors that this ancient home had been perennially forgotten and rediscovered before it caught the attention of academic archaeologists in recent years.
Cantieri Narranti said its top goals for the site now include “protecting the monument and making it accessible,” which it plans to do “in collaboration with the faculty and students of the Liceo Cavour.”
