rome

For roughly a thousand years, a fist-sized clump of silver pennies sat undisturbed in a rubbish pit near the Vatican, overlooked and unremarkable. Now those corroded coins have achieved something no medieval manuscript could: they have proved that a busy English neighborhood genuinely existed a short walk from St Peter's Basilica. Archaeologists excavating beneath the garden of the Palazzo della Rovere have identified twenty Anglo-Saxon coins — the first material evidence of the Schola Saxonum, the "English quarter" of early medieval Rome. A Hoard of Everyday Money, Not Royal Treasure This group is comprised of 1.5 ounces of silver coins. These coins were minted in England over about the forty years that spanned the kingship of Edward the Elder (899-924