News from the ancient world
Rome · c. 800 BC to AD 500 · 19 stories
New discoveries from ancient Rome and the Etruscans: Pompeii, forums and villas, Roman camps and frontiers, Hadrian's Wall, coins, inscriptions and shipwrecks.
A study of 243 people who lived between the 1st and 8th centuries AD puts the Germanic newcomers' genetic share at 12 to 22 percent, depending on region and social context.
The ancient Roman theatre of Mérida, Spain, once the Roman provincial capital Augusta Emerita. Photo: Lmbuga (Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez), CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Rome · 1st century AD · Windisch (Vindonissa), Aargau, Switzerland
A rescue excavation in Windisch has traced the timber-and-earth defences of Vindonissa's first camp and found a charred loaf, which would be Switzerland's first Roman bread.
Rome · 76–72 BC · Irulegi, Navarre, Spain
Arrowheads, sling bullets and Roman-type javelins in the burnt streets of Irulegi record an assault on the Vascon settlement during the Sertorian War, which the team dates to 76–72 BC.
Rome · 1st century BC · Baiae (Bacoli), Campania, Italy
The terraced villa at Baiae, partly swallowed by the sea, may have belonged to Publius Cornelius Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, though the attribution is still unconfirmed.
Rome · 15–10 BC · Barcelona (Carrer d'Hèrcules 3), Catalonia, Spain
Large Montjuïc stone slabs laid around 15–10 BC, when the colony of Barcino was founded, are the first paving of their kind found in the city.
Rome · Imperial period to late antiquity · Via Ostiense, San Paolo Fuori le Mura, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Preventive digging on the Via Ostiense found five vaulted imperial-era tombs, probably for cremation urns, and a much more modest late antique cemetery behind them.
Rome · 1st–4th century AD · Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Deep digging for Cologne's new Jewish museum also exposed a late 1st-century staircase towards the Rhine and a 4th-century apse foundation up to four metres thick.
Rome · c. AD 330 · Ostia Antica, Lazio, Italy
Excavations at Ostia Antica show that a church complex of around AD 330 had a reception hall at least eight metres high, with marble walls and mosaic floors.
Rome · AD 80–171 · Regensburg, Bavaria, Germany
Coins date the sanctuary to between AD 80 and 171, before Regensburg's legionary fortress existed, making it the earliest of nine Mithras temples known in Bavaria.
Rome · Roman imperial period · Gallipoli, Apulia, Italy
Italy's financial police spotted the wreck in the Ionian Sea in June 2025 and kept it secret for months to protect it from looters.
Rome · Late 3rd century BC · Colina de los Quemados, Córdoba, Andalusia, Spain
A 10 cm wrist bone, radiocarbon-dated and found with siege ammunition, may come from a Carthaginian war elephant of the late 3rd century BC.
Rome · 2nd–3rd century AD · Tongeren, Limburg, Belgium
Faint stylus marks on wooden fragments from Tongeren record Roman officials, army veterans and a draft inscription for a statue of the future emperor Caracalla.
Rome · 1st century AD, before AD 79 · Pompeii, Campania, Italy
A lighting technique found the scratched messages beside about 200 known ones, on a wall excavated in 1794 that millions of visitors pass every year.
Rome · 1st century BC · Fano, Marche, Italy
Excavations in Fano have exposed a basilica whose columns and layout match the description Vitruvius gave of his own work in De Architectura.
Rome · Early 3rd century AD · Aken, Trabitz and Deersheim, Saxony-Anhalt, Germany
Ditches, coins and radiocarbon dates place four camps in Saxony-Anhalt in the early 3rd century AD, and one may belong to a campaign by Caracalla in AD 213.
