There must be a metaphor somewhere in this, when somehow it is the angry youth that discovers something of value hidden in plain view that no one bothered to look at before !
In my tuscanian city the university is building a new building for the engineering department. While digging they randomly found an ancient etruscan well. In this case everything went smoothly and timely and it will be preserved, an underground parking near the center had ww2 remains and deeper than that, archeological ones that slowed down the whole thing
> To William’s complete lack of surprise, the little cellar under the shed was much better built than the shed itself. But then, practically everywhere in Ankh-Morpork had cellars that were once the first or even second or third floors of ancient buildings, built at the time of one of the city’s empires when men thought that the future was going to last for ever. And then the river had flooded and brought mud with it, and walls had gone higher and, now, what Ankh-Morpork was built on was mostly Ankh-Morpork. People said that anyone with a good sense of direction and a pickaxe could cross the city underground by simply knocking holes in walls.
As an American, where we have comparatively little history (we’re celebrating 250 years - some folks in Europe live in houses older than that!) visiting Rome is almost mind blowing to see SO MUCH ancient history right there, and almost everywhere. So cool!
Having lived in Italy for 7 years as a teen, the word is that construction of commercial, governmental, and private sites will be shut down for sometimes years so the Italian government and bureaucracy can have its go in deciding what action to take. A Roman era catacomb was found when my sister's school was being expanded, and the Nuns running the school managed to hush it up pretty well. I imagine they explained to the working crew their loss of a job if word got out..
It seems reasonable a similar thing happened here even as far back as the 1870s when the original construction was taking place.
Surprised that Smithsonian magazine makes such an awful website. Every minute, new ads are loaded, shifting the text up and down, making it hard to read.
> The students who found a way into the ruins weren’t the first amateur explorers to rediscover the site. Some of the graffiti scrawled on the walls of the villa dates to between 1920 and 1950, when the building was occupied by a religious order. Other markings are more recent, perhaps left by students at the high school
It's pretty much like this everywhere in Italy. I'm originally from southern Italy and my father worked as a laborer for a local municipality. About 20 years ago, during excavation work to rebuild a wall, he personally unearthed some pottery that turned out to be the contents of a Magna Graecia storehouse dating back roughly 3,000 years.
Another time, more recently, on the outskirts of my hometown, during roadwork to repave a sidewalk, a Greek tomb dating back approximately 2,400 years was discovered.
The lands around the Mediterranean have been inhabited for so long that wherever you dig, you're very likely to find some kind of artifact.
> A room with monochrome stucco decorations Cantieri Narranti
Unlikely. We know that the white marble statues that we have were once painted. Time turned them into what we see today. This room was surely vividly painted.
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[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 42.8 ms ] threadIt seems reasonable a similar thing happened here even as far back as the 1870s when the original construction was taking place.
> The students who found a way into the ruins weren’t the first amateur explorers to rediscover the site. Some of the graffiti scrawled on the walls of the villa dates to between 1920 and 1950, when the building was occupied by a religious order. Other markings are more recent, perhaps left by students at the high school
> A room with monochrome stucco decorations Cantieri Narranti
Unlikely. We know that the white marble statues that we have were once painted. Time turned them into what we see today. This room was surely vividly painted.