Discoveries and news in Rome

Scientists selected the complete mitochondrial genome of a 2500-year-old Phoenician. The study found that the man had European ancestors. This is the first ancient DNA recovered from Phoenician remains.

In 2016, a limestone cemetery dating back to Roman times was discovered in the city of Rakhleh in the Qatana region of Syria (40 km west of Damascus). The discoverer is a farmer who came across the tomb while working in the field.

In the coming months, projects will be implemented in the port of Ostia Antica, in which the Italian government, private organizations and international universities will actively participate. Ostia was a large port of ancient Rome that received huge shipments of grain, wine and olive oil from North Africa and South Italy to feed one million of the city’s inhabitants.

In 2016, archaeologists began excavating two sites in Bath, England. These places were completely forgotten for over half a century.

Archaeological work on the site of a former temple at Poggio Colla in Tuscany has brought a discovery. A 1.2-meter stele with an Etruscan inscription was excavated from under the ground.

Roman ceramics, ranging from 2,000 to 2,400 years old, will undergo modern research. The objects have been in the Capitoline Museum in Rome for over a hundred years.

Hidden for decades, one of the world’s oldest collections of Roman statues and sculptures is so dazzling that an eminent archaeologist once disguised himself as a garbage collector just to get a glimpse of it.

In 2016, after 36 years of restoration, the ancient Church of Santa Maria located in the Forum Romanum was opened to the public. The building dates back to the 1st century CE.

In 2016, during excavations on 21 Lime Street in London, a fragment of a Roman fresco was discovered that dates back to the 1st century CE.

Italian police are investigating after an underground “lake” of the spilt oil has been found in the Roman catacombs along the Apian Road. The place has been secured by the police.