Voices and stories from Rome’s underground: the discovery of the altar of the young Valeria | Turismo Roma
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Voices and stories from Rome’s underground: the discovery of the altar of the young Valeria

Foto da soprintendenzaspecialeroma.it
from 3 June 2022 to 31 October 2022

Rome’s underground always returns new treasures. New discoveries by the Special Superintendence of Rome come this time from an excavation in Via Luigi Tosti, in the Appio Latino district, and tell us the story of a young Roman girl who died when she was little more than a child. In May, archaeological investigations related to work on the water reclamation of the street carried out by Acea Ato2, unearthed a perfectly preserved white marble altar. Its epigraph reads: “Valeria P F Laeta vixit annis XIII m VII” which, according to the first scholastic hypotheses, can be interpreted as “Valeria Laeta daughter of P[ublio] lived 13 years and 7 months”.  

The funeral altar was located just two meters below street level, inside a small columbarium, probably hypogeum and part of the Via Latina necropolis, along with ollae, cinerary urns walled into the walls, inhumation burials and marble remains of great interest. These include some fragments of a tub sarcophagus decorated with refined hunting scenes, probably dating back to the 2nd century AD.

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Foto da soprintendenzaspecialeroma.it