- Archaeological treasures on exhibition in Rome
- Warm healing mud helped preserve them for centuries
- Discovery sheds new light on Etruscan and Roman beliefs
SAN CASCIANO DEI BAGNI, Italy, June 2 (Portal) – One of Italy’s most remarkable archaeological finds in decades is on display this month – Etruscan and Roman statues recovered from the mud of Tuscany, thanks in part to the intuition of a retired dust collector.
About two dozen bronze statues from the third century BC. to the first century AD, recovered from the ruins of an ancient spa town, will be on display at Rome’s Quirinal Palace from June 22nd after months of restoration.
When the discovery was announced in November, experts dubbed it the largest collection of ancient bronze statues ever found in Italy and hailed it as a breakthrough that would “rewrite history”.
The statues were found in 2021 and 2022 in the hilltop village of San Casciano dei Bagni, still home to popular thermal baths where archaeologists have long suspected ancient ruins might be discovered.
However, initial attempts to locate them were unsuccessful.
Excavations began in 2019 on a small plot next to the Renaissance-era village’s public baths, but weeks of excavation unearthed “only traces of some walls,” said San Casciano Mayor Agnese Carletti.
Then former garbage man and amateur local historian Stefano Petrini had “a flash” of intuition, recalling years earlier he had seen parts of ancient Roman columns on a wall across from the public baths.
The columns could only be seen from an abandoned garden that had once belonged to his friend, the late San Casciano greengrocer, who grew fruit and vegetables there to sell in the village shop.
When Petrini took archaeologists there, they knew they had found the right place.
“It all started there, with the pillars,” Petrini said.
Pulled “Skinny Boy” out of the mud
Emanuele Mariotti, head of the San Casciano archaeological project, said his team was “quite distraught” before receiving the lead that led to the discovery of a shrine at the center of the ancient spa complex.
[1/6] Conservator Laura Rivaroli is working on a bronze statue of Apollo in an archer’s pose after it was discovered and extracted from the muddy ruins of an ancient spa in San Casciano dei Bagni, a hilltop village in southern Tuscany that’s still home to popular thermal baths, in Grosseto, Italy, May 29th… Read more
The statues found there were offerings made by Romans and Etruscans who looked to the gods for good health, as were the coins and sculptures of body parts such as ears and feet also recovered at the site.
One of the most spectacular finds was the “skinny boy” bronze, an approximately 90 cm tall statue of a young Roman with obvious bone disease. An inscription bears his name as “Marcius Grabillo”.
“When it emerged from the mud and was therefore partially covered, it looked like an athlete’s bronze … but once cleaned and properly examined it was clear that it was that of a sick person,” said Ada Salvi, ret Archaeologist at the Ministry of Culture for the Tuscan provinces of Siena, Grosseto and Arezzo.
Salvi said traces of more unusual offerings were also recovered, including egg shells, pine cones, peach and plum pits, surgical instruments and a 2,000-year-old lock of curly hair.
“It opens a look at how Romans and Etruscans experienced the connection between health, religion and spirituality,” she said. “There is a whole world of meaning to be understood and studied.”
MORE TREASURES TO FIND
The shrine was sealed at the beginning of the fifth century AD, when the old spa complex was abandoned and its statues were preserved for centuries by the warm mud of the baths.
Excavations will resume at the end of June. Mariotti said, “It is a certainty” that more will be found in the coming years, possibly even the other six or twelve statues that an inscription says were left behind by Marcius Grabillo.
“We just opened the lid,” he said.
After the exhibition in Rome, the statues and other artifacts will find a new home in a museum that authorities plan to open in San Casciano in the next few years.
Petrini hopes the treasures will bring “jobs, culture and knowledge” to his village of 1,500, which like much of rural Italy is struggling with emigration.
But he is reluctant to take credit for their discovery.
“Important things always happen thanks to several people, never just one person,” he said. “Never.”
Edited by Janet Lawrence
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