The remains of a property belonging to Roman Emperor Caligula, with a portico and pipes, have appeared in the ground in Rome's Piazza Piazza, near Vatican City, during work on an underpass for the Jubilee of 2025.
Among the discovery, announced by the Italian Ministry of Culture, is the foundation of what two millennia ago was a colonnaded portico that overlooked a garden in a building built between the times of Augustus and Nero and that at some point belonged to Gaius Julius. Caesar Augustus Germanicus, alias 'Caligula'.
The inscription of the name of this famous emperor who ruled Rome between 37 and 41 AD on a lead water pipe was the clue that led researchers to find, at least, "the person responsible for the first renovation of the complex."
But it has also been possible to attribute ownership of the enclosure thanks to a passage from 'The Embassy of Gaius', by the writer Philo of Alexandria, in which it is told how Caligula had received a representation of the Jews of Alexandria in the gardens of Agrippina, an enclosure next to the Tiber River (like these remains).or to
In this room the emperor was presented with "the difficulties and crisis that had affected the Jewish community of Alexandria in relations with the Greek-Alexandrian population, a conflict that had manifested itself with violence, fights and episodes of religious intolerance."
The similarity between the remains found and the historian's description allowed the researchers to identify the place of this encounter in the excavations of Piazza Pia, a few meters from the Vatican City and where last month a Roman laundry from the 2nd century was also found. .
This discovery has "considerable historical importance" because it places the excavation within the area of the Gardens of Agrippina the Elder, mother of Caligula, so "it is likely that this luxurious residence was inherited first by Germanicus, the emperor's father, then by his wife and then by Caligula himself.
Also in this enclave, "lead pipes with the name of Julia Augusta, presumably Livia Drusilla, second wife of Augustus and grandmother of Germanicus," were found in the last century.
The excavation also revealed an important series of bell slabs (figurative terracottas used for roof decoration) with mythological scenes, reused as manhole covers but "probably originally made to cover some garden structure", according to the archaeologists. EFE