It all started in 2007 when researchers examining images from Google Earth noticed a strange series of lines and dots emerging in the middle of the valley.

Archaeologists in Ostia Antica, the ancient port of Rome on the Tiber, believe that 2020 will indeed be a good year, beyond the typical seasonal wishes. This is because new excavations are expected to provide information about the first colony of the capital, which in its heyday was home to 100,000 people. Maria Rosaria Barbera, head of the excavation, will oversee the work – once the necessary funding arrives. Once the project is completed, archaeologists will have all the necessary information to assess whether Ostia began to decline after the fall of Rome in 410.

“We know that Theodoric, the king of the Ostrogoths, restored the baths next to the area at the end of the 5th century and would not have done so unless the praetorium and the court were still functioning, which means that despite the decline of the empire, Ostia entered the 6th century with its political life continuing,” the archaeologist told the British “Times.”

In the Valley It all started in 2007 when researchers examining images from Google Earth noticed a strange series of lines and dots emerging in the middle of the valley, a little beyond the thermal baths at the Porta Marina gate in the city. “The lines were formed by differences in vegetation, which was affected by what lay beneath, and had become more apparent due to the dry summer,” archaeologist Marcello Turci also described to the “Times.”

It was an observation that would have meant nothing to the unsuspecting. Yet, there lay the beginning of a thread that could lead to a significant discovery. Just a few centimeters below the green mounds and daisies lies an important archaeological site from Roman times, the size of two football fields. Turci, using electrical sensors, Google Earth images, and historical sources, traced the remnants of a lost area of Ostia Antica that now rivals Pompeii in interest.

The New Technology Ostia Antica had gradually been buried under the mud of the Tiber by the 9th century. However, it was revealed when excavation procedures began in 1930, during Mussolini’s era, but the work was frozen due to World War II. After 2007, Turci and his collaborators, with the help of Aix-Marseille University and a French research team, gathered images from search engines like Google and Bing, which they eventually cross-referenced with ancient sources. During their search, they recalled that a 4th-century chronicler had mentioned a market built in Ostia by Emperor Aurelian in the late 3rd century and an adjacent praetorium completed shortly after.

Neither of these buildings had been identified in the images, but there was a slight outline of them from the vegetation changes that covered them, suggesting the praetorium’s perimeter with semicircular extensions. To confirm the findings and create an underground map based on the data they already had from the research, they used magnetic sensors and electric metal detectors, which they embedded in the ground. “We are looking at a large open area framed on one side by a building 30 to 60 meters long with five rooms divided by rows of columns, which are the dots we saw from space,” Turci noted.

“It was likely used as a court and was part of the market complex described by the source. We know that Emperor Tacitus, Aurelian’s successor, donated 100 columns to Ostia, which would explain where they went,” the archaeologist continued.