For those of you who watched the recent sequel to Gladiator, imaginatively named Gladiator II, firstly you have our sympathies. Whatever that mess was, it was closer to ill-conceived fantasy than a heroic, historical epic. But amidst the pointless diversions, the weirdly cheap sets and the endless toga flapping from a poorly cast and out-of-form
In 79 AD the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum were destroyed by an enormous volcanic eruption. The devastation caused by the eruption of Vesuvius went on for two days, burying the two towns under superheated ash and mud. The destructive power of Vesuvius was estimated to be some 100,000 times greater than the atomic
Archaeologists working in the Santa Croce area of Trento in northern Italy have found something exceptional beneath the city streets. An ancient necropolis has been discovered, some eight meters beneath the surface. Some 200 tombs have been discovered, as reported by the Provincia Autonoma di Trento. The tombs date to the early Iron Age, between
Some of the finds from the cities destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius are ruined beyond restoration. Much was preserved but the destruction was immense, and the greater part of the contents of the houses were lost. Where they survive they are heavily damaged, and so it is with a charred scroll from Herculaneum, far
Near the center of the Roman city of Pompeii lies a large area known to archaeologists and researchers as Regio IX. This area is largely unexcavated, overlooked in favour of the grander public buildings which were prioritized as the city gave up her secrets. But, as recent discoveries have shown, there is much hidden beneath
Italian Police have announced the recovery of looted artifacts stolen from a necropolis in Italy, according to a statement from the Italian Ministry of Culture. The artifacts, from Umbria in central Italy, date to the 3rd century BC and are Etruscan, a civilization which controlled central Italy before Rome was the dominant power in the