A rare stone marking the pomerium, the sacred boundary line of Rome, dating from the reign of Emperor Claudius has been discovered during the excavation and restoration of Augustus’ Mausoleum in Rome. Known as a cippus, the travertine stone was found still fixed in the ground on the site of the family tomb where Claudius’ own cinerary remains were laid to rest. Only 10 other pomerial cippi have been discovered in Rome and it’s been 100 years since the last one was found.

According to the legend of the founding of Rome, the pomerium was the boundary line of the city ploughed by Romulus on April 21st, 753 B.C., Rome’s birthday. The furrow was ploughed in accordance with elaborate religious rites of Etruscan origin that took days to complete. The wall of the city would be built following the furrow and the strip of land between it and the wall would be considered the pomerium as well as the original furrow. This was a sacred space, dedicated to the city’s patron gods and essential to the protection of the city from supernatural threats. Romulus killed Remus for jumping over the furrow, a sacrilege so monstrous it justified immediate execution.

The urbs of Rome were inside the pomerium. No foreign ruler could cross its  boundary. Armed Romans couldn’t cross it either, including generals returning from war. They had to wait outside until granted a special dispensation for the triumph. Even the lictors, the protectors of the king/consul, could not bear the axes in their fasces within the pomerium. As the city grew, the pomerium remained unchanged since the 6th king of Rome, Servius Tullius, built the Servian wall around it. Sulla was the first to enlarge the pomerium in 80 B.C. when he was dictator, an absolutely massive power move that telegraphed in the clearest of terms that he was in charge and would not be bound even by Rome’s most ancient religious and political traditions.

Claudius’ expansion was, on paper anyway, less of a direct middle finger to the hallowed rules. Tacitus explains in his Annals:

The Caesar also enlarged the pomerium,​ in consonance with the old custom, by which an expansion of the empire​ confers the right to extend similarly the boundaries of the city: a right, however, which, even after the conquest of powerful nations, had been exercised by no Roman commander except Lucius Sulla and the deified Augustus.

(Okay that last part is not actually true. Vespasian had done it too. There are extant cippi from his expansion.)

The markers from the Claudian expansion of the pomerium in 49 A.D. confirm the justification Tacitus provides. The empire has expanded thanks to Claudius’ conquest of Britain, ergo, he has expanded the city’s sacred boundary.

The full inscription of Claudius’ pomerial cippi reads:

TI CLAVDIVS

DRVSI FILIVS CAISAR

AVG GERMANICVS

PONT MAX TRIB POT

VIIII IMP XVI COS IIII

CENSOR P P

AUCTIS POPVLI ROMANI

FINIBVS POMERIVM

AMPLIAℲIT TERMINAℲITQUE

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Tiberius Claudius

Son of Drusus, Caesar

Augustus Germanicus,

Supreme Pontiff, vested with the Tribunician power

for the 9th time, acclaimed Emperor 16 times, Consul for the fourth time,

Censor, Father of his Country,

due to the enlargement of the territory of the Roman people, increased and delimited the pomerium.

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The one discovered at Piazzale Augusto Imperatore has lost the first five lines and only part of the next two lines survive. Only the last two are complete. That’s enough to identify it as a Claudian pomerial cippus.

On a side note, it gives you a glimpse of one of Claudius’ more arcane interests. He was an antiquarian and made a study of Etruscan language and history. As emperor, he actively pursued the reform of spelling to ensure the proper (ie, ancient) pronunciation of spoken Latin. The Ⅎ character seen twice in the last line was a character Claudius invented to represent the W sound of V to differentiate it from the U sound. (He added two other characters to the Latin alphabet; the usage of all three died with him.) The second line of the inscription has another one of his spelling reforms: the archaic “Caisar” in place of “Caesar.” In Claudius’ time, the AE sound had already shifted to away from the old “aye” closer to the “eh” sound of modern Italian’s “cesare,” and he was extra salty about his own family name being mispronounced, so he made it explicit by adopting the “ai” spelling.

It has gone on display in the Paladino Hall of the Ara Pacis Museum, literally across the street from the Mausoleum, next to a cast of a statue of Claudius.

The Domus Aventino is a high-end condominium complex offering all technology, comfort, amenities, energy efficiency and round-the-clock of new construction in the historic surroundings of Piazza Albania at the foot of Rome’s Aventine Hill. Three buildings, built in the 1950s and for decades headquarters of a bank, were converted into 180 luxury apartments and penthouses. Installation of new earthquake-resistant foundations in 2014 revealed ancient remains which were excavated by archaeologists from the Special Superintendency of Rome. Elaborate mosaic floors from an Imperial-era villa demonstrated that the luxury dwellings of modern Rome stood on two hundred years of luxury dwellings of ancient Rome.

There is evidence of human occupation at the site going back to the prehistory of Rome, the 8th century B.C. when legend has it Romulus founded the city. The excavation also unearthed a wall of volcanic tufa blocks that may have bene the base of a guard tower built between the 4th and 3rd century B.C. when the Servian Wall was constructed looping around the foot of the Aventine Hill. Just a few steps away on the Viale Aventino is an extremely rare surviving archway from this wall in which a throwing weapon like a ballista or a catapult could be positioned to defend against marauders.

The site seems to have first changed from public defensive structure to private use around the middle of the 2nd century B.C., although the material from this period is too sparse to determine how it was used. Within this large perimeter, the floorplan of a domus emerged with identifiable areas for sleeping and for daytime use, storage areas and open-air gardens. Over the two centuries, six levels of floors were superimposed on each other. The full stratigraphic record was brought to light in one location of the house, and analysis of the six layers found that the home was restructured about every 30 years. Every generation put its stamp on this villa, altering it and refurbishing it to meet new needs and fashions.

The oldest mosaic floor dates to the late 1st century B.C. and features black and white tiles arranged in a hexagonal pattern. The next two chronologically date to the second half of the 1st century A.D. and the beginning of the 2nd. A partial inscription (the black tiles that formed the letters were reused in later renovations) dates to the reign of Trajan (98-117 A.D.) and records three patrons of that particular mosaic pavement, suggesting it may have had a semi-public use at this time, as in for members of an association.

Black-and-white geometric mosaics from the era of Hadrian (117-138 A.D.) were found in good condition, but the real stand-outs are five mosaics dating to the Antonine dynasty (150-175 A.D.). These were the first ones encountered by the finders and they are dazzling in their array of iconographic elements and color accents. One floor has a black-on-white figure eight pattern that has never been seen before. A few painted walls from this phase have also survived.

The Antonine mosaic floors undulate today, a result of centuries of earth movement culminating in structurally damaging subsidence that likely caused the abandonment of the villa in the early 3rd century. In addition to the floors of the domus, archaeologists discovered hundreds of artifacts including lacquered bowl fragments, a hairpin, a key and an amphora used to store garum, the fermented fish gut sauce that Romans put on everything.

The excavation, conservation of the mosaics and walls in situ and the creation of an exhibit environment to allow the public access to the exceptional remains were privately financed by the developers of the complex who are happily using the extreme coolness of their ancient basement in their promotional materials. The Hadrianic and Antonine mosaics are on display, enhanced by a light projection system that fills in some of the blanks in the mosaics and visually recreates lost frescoed walls and furnishings of the domus. They’re calling it an archaeological treasure chest, opened to the public two days a month, then closed back up to protect it (and the luxury penthouse owners).

The earliest known religious basilica was a secret when it was first built in the 1st century A.D. It was ingenious constructed entirely underground by digging out the forms of the walls and pillars from the soft volcanic tufa, pouring concrete into them and then cutting away the tufa. They poured arches for the barrel vaulted and dome ceilings over the pillars and then cut out all the tufa left in the interior to create a basilica just like the ones used as public buildings above ground.

The public ones were used to do business, commercial, legal and governmental. It wasn’t until Constantine that the basilica design was used for the first churches in the 4th century. The one exception is this remarkable structure just outside the ancient walls of Rome at the Porta Maggiore. To this day we don’t know what exactly the space was used for. The mythology-heavy stucco reliefs and architectural proportions (all measurements relate to the number three) indicate it may have been a cult site for a Neopythagorean mystery religion. The dating of the mosaic floor indicate it two construction periods, one under Augustus, the second under Claudius.

When I first wrote about the magical mystery wonderland that is the Basilica Sotteranea at the Porta Maggiore in Rome, it had just opened to the public after 12 years of restoration. Visitors were allowed for the first time in decades to descend 30 feet under the Via Praenestina into the dromos, the long entrance gallery, and the atrium. They could gaze in away at the soaring walls decorated with delicate stucco figures and scenes from mythology and the barrel and dome vaults topping them.

Because of the complex environmental needs of the space — its structure and ornamentation is highly susceptible to heat, moisture and microorganism growth — only guided tours were allowed on the second and fourth Sundays of the month, reservations required. Alas, when I visited Rome two years later, the Basilica Sotterranea was no longer open. Now I know why: it was busily engaged in the next stages of conservation. Funded by the Swiss historic preservation non-profit Fondation Evergète, the vaults and apses have received much-needed attention. The entire north wall from floor to ceiling of the left nave has been restored to its stunning pristine whiteness.

Restoration is ongoing and the basilica is still an active worksite. Visitors are welcomed in the new “didactic room” in the atrium, where augmented reality visors will give people the opportunity to see the stucco reliefs and frescoes up close. On the agenda for 2020 is the full conservation of the south wall of the left nave and the installation of a new lighting system to illuminate the wall decorations.

This exceptional space has a lot in common with the Domus Aurea — dark, soaring underground spaces, fragile decorations, mythology, mosaics, endemic danger from water and invasive organisms — and that tour was such an awesome experience I did it two years in a row. Guided tours of the Basilica Sotterranea di Porta Maggiore run at 11AM on the 2nd, 3rd and 4th Sunday of the month and are available in Italian only. Tickets can be purchased online here.

The excavation of the Via Alessandrina, a 16th century road that runs from Trajan’s Forum to Nerva’s Forum in the heart of Imperial Rome, has turned up a large white marble torso. It is almost five feet high, even missing its head and lower body, and depicts a male figure wearing a draped garment.  Unlike the marble head that was unearthed on the same dig at the end of May, this piece was not recycled into a medieval wall, nor are the two statue parts related to each other in any way.

This one was found among rubble in an area that had been abandoned after a collapse during a period of demolitions that took place in the area in the 9th century. Previous excavations in 1998 and 2000 Archaeologists believe that the torso is from one of 60-70 statues of Dacian warriors that decorated Trajan’s Forum when it was built in the early 2nd century A.D.

Trajan’s Forum was the last, largest and most grandiose of the five imperial forums (Caesar 46 B.C., Augustus 2 B.C., of the Peace 75 A.D., Nerva (97 A.D.). There’s evidence that the plan for the new forum was actually conceived in the last years of the reign of Domitian (r. 81-97 A.D.), but if so, he only made a start at the job. The slopes of the Quirinal Hill had to be leveled to carve out the 4.2 hectares of space the Forum of Trajan would occupy. Its primary practical function was likely the administration of justice whose complexity had far outgrown its earlier spaces in the Caesar’s and Augustus’ fora. It was also a glorious reflection of Trajan’s victories against the Dacians (101-102 A.D., 105-106 A.D.). Trajan’s booty from the defeat of the Dacians funded the construction of the forum. It was completed in 112 A.D.

In the location where the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Trajan was a courtyard with a columned portico on three sides richly decorated with colored marbles (the columns were veined green marble, the pavement slabs alternating green and pinkish-red). Above the columns was an architrave decorated with a bas relief of griffons and topped with gilded bronze inscription celebrating the construction of the forum by Trajan with the proceeds of the Dacian wars. The statues of the Dacian warriors adorned this portico.

The existence of a grand space connecting the old forum of Augustus with the shiny new forum Trajan built was only discovered during excavations in 1998-2000. Those excavations also unearthed pieces of statues very similar to the recently-unearthed one. They are now on display in the Market of Trajan – Museum of the Imperial Forums. The latest find will be conserved and studied and then will join its compatriots on display in the museum.

In tangentially related news, for the first time since I can remember, the forums are now open to visitors. Instead of having to stand at modern street level looking down over balconies, you can now go down the ever-gated stairs and walk four of the five Imperial Forums, plus the Republican-era Roman Forum. The new Forum Pass allows visitors to walk a three-mile route over footbridges. The single ticket costs 16 euros, purchased online or at the ticket office at the base of Trajan’s Column. From there you walk through Trajan’s Forum and then, through a series of medieval cellars that are all that remain of the buildings in the Alessandrino neighborhood that was destroyed in the 1930s of the Via dei Fori Imperiali above, you cross the street to the Forum of Caesar. From Caesar’s Forum you walk to the Forum of Nerva, then to the Curia and into the Roman Forum and the Palatine.

It’s an awesome walk, and for the longest time people weren’t allowed down to the ground levels of any of the fora. The loophole I found last year was a nighttime sounds and lights shows walking the same route. It was really fantastic, but it was, well, nighttime, so you’re experiencing less the pure archaeological site than the rare views of silhouetted ruins against the night sky and projected images that convey how the buildings looked in their heyday.