Claudia Marino did not believe the story at first. A student told her ten years ago that something lay under the school, and she gave it little thought. Then, after a student protest, a group of pupils came back to her. “There really is something under the school,” they said. “We take our pupils to have outdoor lessons on the Palatine Hill, so they know [what] they are talking about,” Marino later told The Times of London.
She went down to the basement with colleagues and unlocked an iron door. Past it lay ancient Roman walls and “a space we squeezed through.” Then, she said, “we were in the villa.”
The building is Cavour High School, a few steps from Rome’s Colosseum, and what lay behind that door is a domus, an upscale Roman house. Archaeologists presented the results of their excavation to teachers and students at the school earlier in June, and the find was announced on May 28, 2026.
How it came to light
A school statement said the domus turned up “by chance” under the gymnasium. Officials did not say more about the circumstances. The statement did explain what followed: “Over the years, after becoming aware of these findings, school staff informed Rome’s Special Superintendency about the accidental discoveries.” Work then began in January 2026 to clear away more recent fill material, which opened the way for a proper dig.
The excavation is funded with €350,000 from Italy’s National Recovery and Resilience Plan. The house dates to the mid-second century. Marino and Filippo Coarelli, an archaeologist at the University of Perugia, presented the findings to the public, and the site has been renamed Domus Liceo Cavour.
Photos released by officials show vaulted rooms, faded frescoes, decorative plasterwork, piles of rubble and some modern graffiti. Reds still glow in figurative and floral frescoes, and stucco covers the ceiling vaults. One room has a mosaic of large, irregular tiles, a style favored by Rome’s elite at the time.
Some of the graffiti is dated 1940 and 1950, so people were getting in long before the archaeologists.
Still mostly buried
Only part of the house has been examined. It runs far under the school, and further digs may follow. The Special Superintendency is carrying out stratigraphic analysis and preparing detailed documentation before it decides anything on public access, according to Wanted in Rome.
Officials still plan to open the villa to visitors eventually. The students who kept the rumor alive may serve as guides.
The domus is one of several Roman buildings found or rediscovered recently. Last summer, archaeologists on Rome’s Metro Line C project uncovered a multi-story apartment building from the first century B.C. Earlier in the same season, a pedestrian helped identify an ancient Roman building at a highway construction site in Switzerland.
Sources
- Italian teenagers discover a 1,800-year-old Roman luxury villa hiding beneath their high school gym
- Ancient Roman villa beneath high school gym reveals stunning secret from the past – AOL
- Ancient Roman villa beneath high school gym reveals stunning secret from the past
