A 2,000-year-old theatre found 25 metres below Pompeii ruins revealed

Herculaneum, like its neighbouring city of Pompeii, was buried under volcanic ash and pumice during the tragic event 2,000 years ago. Now found below the modern-day town of Ercolano, the city was rediscovered by chance in 1709 during the digging of a well. 

Tunnels were soon added at the site by treasure hunters, and some artefacts were removed but now, 200 years later, TV cameras explored the area during Channel 5’s “Pompeii: The New Revelations”.

Historian Dan Snow detailed how an incredible discovery was made.

He said earlier this month: “In 1709, a well was dug in this town that had grown up on the coast eight miles north of Pompeii.

“The workers started to pull up slabs of beautiful marble.

“A French aristocrat, Emmanuel d’Elbeuf, was building a mansion nearby, so he was in the market for marble.

Quite quickly he realised this must have been a Roman theatre

Dan Snow

“He decided to cut out the middleman and bought the well for himself.

“First a worker, and then d’Elbeuf himself were strapped into slings and lowered 15 metres down the well.”

Mr Snow went on to detail how an ancient Roman theatre was uncovered, in a remarkable breakthrough.

He added: “At the bottom, he discovered this cavity and he started crawling around and found broken bits of marble and statues.

“Quite quickly he realised this must have been a Roman theatre, it could only be a theatre from the lost town of Herculaneum that the Roman authors had talked about.

“A group of convicts were sent down here and told to tunnel through and mine it for treasure.

“They’ve left us with this warren of tunnels that they hacked out.

“Luckily, they didn’t take all the murals, they left some here, you can still see some of the beautiful Roman paintings.”

Mr Snow explored the theatre, detailing how key features could still be made out today,

He continued: “Look at that, it’s been underground ever since that invasion in 79AD, the colours still perfect.

“Look up there on the arches, just beautiful, they stripped whatever they could find.

“Slowly, these convicts hollowed out more and more of this structure, until they’d uncovered pretty large parts of the theatre.

“They revealed the stage, the steps to the auditorium and some of the rows of seats – in total would have accommodated up to 2,500 people.

“This is where the people of Herculaneum would have sat side-by-side, watching the action on the stage below.  (video link below)

https://cdn.jwplayer.com/previews/9OEHtK1X

“It’s a Roman theatre buried under 25 metres of volcanic rock.”

Although it was smaller than Pompeii, Herculaneum was a wealthier town.  It was a popular seaside retreat for the Roman elite, which is reflected in the extraordinary density of grand and luxurious houses with a marble finish.

Famous buildings of the ancient city include the Villa of the Papyri and the so-called boat houses in which the skeletal remains of at least 300 people were found.

Archaeology breakthrough: Bombshell discovery unearths third-century human mountains’

The discovery was made near Rome, as researchers came across the remains of a man that would have been classed as a giant when he lived in the third century A.D.

It represents an incredibly rare find – as today gigantism affects about three people in a million worldwide.

The condition begins in childhood, when a malfunctioning pituitary gland causes abnormal growth.

Two partial skeletons, one from Poland and another from Egypt, had previously been identified as “probable” cases of gigantism, but the Roman specimen is thought to be the first clear case from the ancient past, study leader Simona Minozzi, a paleopathologist at Italy’s University of Pisa said.

The figure stood at about 6ft 8 inches, classed as a giant in third century A.D when the average height for a man was 5ft 5 inches.

The unusual skeleton was found in 1991 during an excavation at a necropolis in Fidenae (map), a territory indirectly managed by Rome.

At the time, the Archaeological Superintendence of Rome, which led the project, noted that the man’s tomb was abnormally long. It was only during a later anthropological examination, though, that the bones too were found to be unusual. Shortly thereafter, they were sent to Minozzi’s group for further analysis.

o find out if the skeleton had gigantism, the team examined the bones and found evidence of skull damage consistent with a pituitary tumor, which disrupts the pituitary gland, causing it to overproduce human growth hormone.

Other findings — such as disproportionately long limbs and evidence that the bones were still growing even in early adulthood — support the gigantism diagnosis, according to the study, published October 2 2012 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism.

His early demise — likely between the age of 16 and 20 — might also point to gigantism, which is associated with cardiovascular disease and respiratory problems, said Minozzi, who emphasized that the cause of death remains unknown.

Charlotte Roberts, an archaeologist at Durham University, said she was “certainly convinced with the diagnosis” of gigantism in 2012, but that she’d like to know more.

She said: “You can’t just study the disease, you have to look at the wider impact of how people functioned in society, and whether they were treated any differently.”

She added that one thing researchers to know is that the second-century A.D. emperor Maximinus Thrax was described in the literature as a “human mountain.”

Minozzi noted, though, that imperial Roman high society “developed a pronounced taste for entertainers with evident physical malformations, such as hunchbacks and dwarfs — so we can assume that even a giant generated enough interest and curiosity”.

Roberts also highlighted how the find has been useful in learning about gigantism.

She said: “Normally a doctor will be looking at a patient with a disease over short-term span.

“We’ve been able to look at skeletons from archaeological sites that are thousands of years old. You can start to look at trends of how diseases have changed in frequency over time.”

An Ancient Fast Food Restaurant in Pompeii That Served Honey-Roasted Rodents Is Now Open to the Public

Archaeologists studying the Roman city of Pompeii recently discovered a thermopolium—a kind of ancient fast food restaurant—and it is now open to the public.

Visitors won’t be able to try the Roman delicacies that would have been served at the original restaurant—since this is a society that thought honey-roasted rodents raised in jars were a delicacy—but they will be able to see the establishment’s colourful fresco paintings.

One artwork seemingly features ingredients that would have been prepared at the thermopolium, such as a rooster, while another shows a scene from mythology, with a Nereid riding a sea-horse.

A third depicts a collared dog and Roman-era graffiti that roughly translates to “Nicias Shameless Shitter,” presumably an insult to the owner, Nicias.

The discovery, in 2019, “led to a greater understanding of the diet and daily life of Pompeians,” Massimo Osanna, the former head of the Pompeii archaeological park and now director general of Italy’s museums, said in a statement.

Experts believe prepared food would have been displayed in large dolia jars set in holes carved in the stone counter, similar to today’s take-out restaurants.

The excavations uncovered duck, pig, goat, and fish bones, as well as snail shells amid shards of earthen pottery, suggesting that some kind of meat and seafood stew may have been on the menu. Typical dishes served at a thermopolium would have included salty fish, baked cheese, lentils, and spicy wine, according to the Guardian. (One jar apparently still smelled strongly of wine when archaeologists first discovered it.)

The dining culture and culinary traditions of Pompeii are currently the subject of “Last Supper in Pompeii,” an exhibition at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor museum.

The city’s sudden destruction with the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D. instantly carbonized food and cookware, leaving a record of day-to-day life frozen in time.

The thermopolium was a fixture of Pompeii—the newly discovered site is just one of 80 such restaurants that have been found in the city—because poor Roman families couldn’t afford to have kitchens in their homes. And, in an inversion of contemporary society, the wealthy didn’t go out for expensive meals. Instead, they had enslaved workers prepare feasts at home, served up in richly decorated banquet halls.

Archaeologists uncovered the thermopolium during excavations at Regio V, a section of Pompeii that is not yet fully open to the public and has been home to most of the active digging on the site since the 1960s. In addition to the restaurant, sections of the Casa di Orione and Casa del Giardino mansions are also opening to visitors this week.

Other recent Regio V finds include a skeleton of a man believed to have been killed fleeing the volcano and a selection of amulets that may have belonged to a female sorcerer.

Human bones found at the new thermopolium suggest the business’s proprietor may have died on the premises.