If you were planning on including a bit of Roman heritage in your Summer travel plans, then it’s worth bearing in mind that you don’t have to make the trip all the way to Rome to see something as impressive as the Colosseum. South eastern France was annexed by the Romans as early as 125 BC and the region is rich with a wide variety of monuments dating from the empire that brought it aqueducts, villas, wine and roads more than 2,000 years ago. Here is a look at some of the main Roman heritage sites to discover in the…
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This recent entry on Blogging Pompeii is a good reminder that tramping around a dusty, dry forum or the streets of Pompeii under a hot mid-day sun is not the only way to get to see a bit of history this summer. How about visiting some Roman ruins in a rather cooler, shadier location but you’ll need your snorkelling mask and flippers. Naples is full of tourists at this time of year – most of them head to the crowd magnets of Pompeii, Herculaneum, the historical centre of Naples with its museum and the island of Capri. But to the…
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A rare find has emerged at the excavation of Vindolanda: a stone altar dedicated to an eastern god, Jupiter of Doliche. The third-century AD altar forms part of a ‘unique religious shrine’, which was uncovered near the north gate of the fort last month. Vindolanda is a former Roman fort and garrison, forming part of the heritage site of Hadrian’s Wall, running from Carlysle to Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the north of England. The altar, weighing about 1.5 tons, was dedicated by a prefect of the Fourth Cohort of Gauls. The words are inscribed on the altar are: I.O.M. Dolocheno Sulpicius Pu…
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Burial grounds dating back to the sixth century BC are usually taken pretty good care of and considered important national heritage sites – or at least you would have thought so. This wasn’t the case recently in Puglia, where an archaeological site from at least 500 BC was used as an illegal dumping ground. It is reported that 135 tons of dangerous waste – including building materials, disused wagons and other heavy-duty items from the state railways, as well as out-dated pneumatic machines and vehicles was left at three sites near the town of Martina Franca, near Taranto in southern…
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After almost 5,000 years of peace and quiet, a warrior thought to date from the eneolithic age has been roused from his sleep. The discovery was made in May this year, after a winter of high tides and storms led to coastal erosion in the area of Nettuno, near Anzio, south of Rome. Click here to see a video of the discovery and excavation. It is thought that the tomb may be part of a larger eneolithic or Copper Age necropolis. The warrior, nicknamed Nello by his finders, is believed to date from the third millennium BC. The discovery was…
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Scientists from the University of Padua have, for the first time, been able to decipher the streets and buildings of a lost Roman town called Altinum, just north of Venice. They did this by flying over the site near the modern-day village of Altino, which is today no more than a few cornfields to the naked eye. They then took aerial photos with cameras using near-infrared and other light wavelengths. The result is an image of the Altinum that lies half a metre or more below ground level, and clearly shows streets, a basilica, an amphitheatre and a canal. Historians…
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The Ongoing Silvio Saga That Berlusconi is involved in a tangled web of political scandal and lurid details about his private life is nothing new. To date he’s been accused of bribery, an impropriety with an under-age girl, as well as involvement with the mafia, all with impunity (which makes me laugh, because in the UK all you need to make an MP resign is the whiff of a dodgy expense claims form). After all, Silvio is not stupid by any means, and at times when a problem has arisen, he has been known to conveniently have a law passed…
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Mary Beard is professor of Classics at Newnham College, Cambridge, and Classics editor of the Times Literary Supplement. Her academic work mainly focuses on aspects of Roman and Greek culture and she claims to be ‘particularly interested in the reception of Classics in the modern world’. This is borne out by her column for the Times Online, A Don’s Life, which comments incisively on modern life, often with a classical twist – I particularly liked her suggestions for Latin catch-phrases for London’s tube commuters. She also has a long list of published books to her name, the two most recent…
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New research suggests that there is no genetic link between the inhabitants of modern-day central Italy and the civilised race who lived there well before the rise of the Roman empire. Despite the fact that the Etruscans were never physically wiped out by the Romans, experts have concluded that for some reason they are not the ancestors of the modern-day Tuscans. Etruria spanned from south of Rome up to the Po River valley during the civilisation’s most powerful period, and the Etruscans inhabited the area of Rome before the city claimed its independence from the Etruscan kings in 509 BC.…
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Via Dell’ Impero An exhibition opening today at the Musei Capitolini in Rome shows the building of the city’s infamous via dei Fori Imperiali (previously via dell’ Impero), which also tore through the forums of Nerva, Augustus and Trajan, with little regard for the ancient Roman constructions that lay beneath. Via Dell’ Impero – Nascita di una Strada (Birth of a Road) will feature photos, paintings and sketches by professional Roman photographers and artists, including Filippo Reale, Cesare Faraglia and Odoardo Ferretti. The exhibition runs until20 September, documenting the demolition of buildings and the excavations which took place before the…