Caligula was Rome’s most tyrannical emperor. His reign from 37-41 AD is filled with murder and debauchery, to levels even his infamous nephew Nero could not reach. The great-great grandson of Julius...
The history of Hannibal Barca , one of the greatest military commanders of the ancient world, is one which has fascinated historians and generals throughout the last two millennia, and yet his final...
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, better known as Michelangelo, is one of the most famous figures of the Italian Renaissance period (between the 14th and 16th centuries AD). The Renaissance...
At the foot of the hill on which sits the ancient city of Cumae, in the region of Naples, Priscilla Munzi, CNRS researcher at the Jean Bérard Centre (CNRS-EFR), and Jean-Pierre Brun, professor at the...
The Praetorian Guard is said to be one of the most prestigious military units in the ancient world, and is arguably one of the most well-known today. These elite soldiers are best known for serving...
Prior to the adoption of Christianity as its official religion at the end of the 3 rd century AD, the Roman Empire’s religious policy was one of tolerance. Along with the official Roman religion,...
Stone tools found with a 5,300-year-old frozen mummy from Northern Italy reveal how alpine Copper Age communities lived, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Ursula...
Experts at the Louvre Museum in Paris have made a rather important but strange discovery. They have discovered that an apparent bronze toe, is in fact a finger, and it belongs to a famous statue of...
Spanish university students trying to retrace Hannibal’s war march through northeastern Spain found a huge buried moat with ancient objects in it. The moat may have been meant to protect the ancient...
In Italy, researchers have found what they believe to be the oldest living tree in Europe, having calculated its age to be approximately 1230 years old, according to a report from Discovery. The tree...
Prior to the rise of Rome, Italy was inhabited by a number of different peoples. The coastal region of southern Italy and Sicily, for instance, was colonized by the Greeks, whilst the interior of...
Donkeys, pigs, and dogs have all been found amongst the ruins of Pompeii , but the remains of a carbonized horse are the first example archaeologists have come across of that animal. While the...
One of the most important relics in Christendom, the Holy Prepuce (Jesus’s circumcised foreskin) put this clifftop town on the map in the 16th century as a place of pilgrimage. In the 20th century it...
A team of scientists in Italy have revealed that the 1,400-year-old remains of a woman and a fetus discovered in Bologna, is a rare case of a ‘coffin birth’, in which the pregnant woman gave birth to...
Many folks see the Etruscan civilization as merely a segue, a follow up to the Greeks and a foreshadowing to the Romans. But casting this ancient society as a sideline character might not do them...
The Monumental Cemetery of Staglieno is a well-known burial site located in the Italian city of Genoa, which is considered one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the whole of Europe. It is famous...
Ruins of old mills dot the landscape of the Valle dei Mulini (‘Valley of the Mills’). Their crumbled walls are the remains of abandoned structures which once filled the valley with human life. Now,...
On the island of Torcello there exists an ancient white chair that local legend names as the throne of Attila the Hun. The chair is large, of solid stone and certainly has the air of unyielding...
Gladiatorial fights, sea battles, criminal (and Christian?) executions. These are only a few of the events, if they can even be called such, that happened in the walls of the Colosseum. Known during...
A 2,000-year-old intact and inscribed sundial – one of only a handful known to have survived – has been recovered during the excavation of a roofed theatre in the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas,...
Scientists have officially verified that copper used to make Otzi the Iceman’s axe blade did not come from the Alpine region as was initially suggested, but instead it came from southern Tuscany in...
Several years ago, surprising discoveries were made in a study , which drew on the findings of a sizable excavation of an area of Pompeii. The study, which was presented to the Archaeological...
Discoveries of ancient shipwrecks are always exciting, but a small number of them are truly unique in the artifacts they yield, offering up items from the past that have been preserved for centuries...
For centuries, the bloody gladiator conflicts that the Romans staged in amphitheatres throughout the empire have engrossed and repelled us. When it comes to gladiators, it is almost impossible to...
