An ancient Roman villa, or domus, has been uncovered beneath the gymnasium of Cavour High School, located a short distance from Rome's Colosseum. The discovery gained traction after students drew attention to long-standing rumors of ruins on the school grounds.
Archaeologists presented their findings to teachers and students at the high school in June, following excavations that began in January 2026. The work involved removing recent fill material to reveal the buried structure.
Images released by officials show vaulted rooms adorned with faded frescoes and decorative plasterwork. The site also contains modern graffiti and rubble, with evidence suggesting the villa had been accessed decades prior to the recent excavation, including graffiti dated to the 1940s and 1950s.
Claudia Marino, a history and Latin teacher at Cavour High School, initially dismissed reports of ruins. However, after a student protest years ago, a group of students told her that something was indeed beneath the school. Marino and her colleagues investigated, eventually accessing the villa through an iron door in the school's basement. "Beyond that were ancient Roman walls, a space we squeezed through — and we were in the villa," she told The Times of London.
Officials have indicated plans to eventually open the villa to the public, with students expected to play a role as guides. This discovery adds to a series of Roman structures found or rediscovered in recent years. For example, excavations for Rome's Metro Line C project last summer uncovered a multi-story apartment building dating to the first century B.C. Separately, a pedestrian discovered an ancient Roman building at a highway construction site in Switzerland earlier that season.