School construction reveals ancient Roman bath in Italy. See inside the hidden chambers
In southern Europe, a millennium of history sat hidden under just a few feet of dirt and rocks.
As cultures moved forward, people built next to and on top of existing structures. Evidence of past lives were left behind in each buried layer.
During construction at a school in Italy, excavators and archaeologists pulled back the ground floor and foundation only to find hidden chambers buried underneath, according to a June 5 news release from the Superintendent of Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape for the city of Reggio Calabria.
More than 30 rooms were found, many filled with soil, and some filled with artifacts and portions of an old construction.
Using the materials collected from inside the rooms and the masonry techniques, archaeologists dated the buildings to sometime between 200 B.C. and 300 A.D., according to the release.
That places them in the Late Republican Age to the Imperial Age, a time when Rome was expanding from a regional republic to an expansive empire.
Archaeologists believe the rooms belonged to a housing complex, likely private homes, that would have been next to the urban sector of the Roman colony, according to the release.
One of these rooms is special, researchers said, and belonged to a thermal complex, either as a large bath house or a swimming pool.
The room was built with decorative marble, and surrounded by columns and statues that had since collapsed to the bottom of the pit, according to the release.
One of theses statues depicts the goddess Artemis, equated with Diana in Roman mythology, and it has since been placed in a museum.
The hidden buildings were found close to other homes and bath houses discovered in the 1970s, archaeologists said.
Those buildings also had mosaics, according to the release, and officials believe they are part of the same residential and public district as the new finds.
The discoveries were made in Reggio Calabria, a coastal town on the southern tip of Italy.
This story was originally published June 7, 2024 at 4:50 PM with the headline "School construction reveals ancient Roman bath in Italy. See inside the hidden chambers."
