Anglo-Saxon Coins Reveal a ‘Little England’ in Rome

For decades, historians knew from medieval texts that Anglo-Saxon pilgrims had their own neighborhood in Rome. What they never had was a single physical object to prove it. Twenty small, unremarkable-looking coins just changed that.

A Garden Near St. Peter’s

The coins turned up during excavations beneath the walled garden of the Palazzo della Rovere, also known as the Palazzo de’ Penitenzieri, close to the Vatican. Work at the site began in 2020 under the Soprintendenza Speciale di Roma, directed by Renato Sebastiani and Alessio De Cristofaro, with fieldwork carried out by MDM Archeologia and coordinated by Marzia Di Mento. The site had already drawn international attention in 2023, when archaeologists identified remains there as the theater of the Roman emperor Nero. This time, it was the medieval layers that produced the headline find. Researchers recovered 30 coins in total from five separate archaeological contexts: 20 Anglo-Saxon, and 10 Roman and 10th-century Italian.

Nineteen Pennies and a Halfpenny

The Anglo-Saxon coins consist of 19 silver pennies and a single halfpenny, minted over roughly 40 years in the names of three successive English rulers: Edward the Elder, Alfred the Great’s son, who reigned from 899 to 924; Æthelstan, Edward’s son, who reigned from 924 to 939; and Eadred, Edward’s other son, who reigned from 946 to 955. Identifiable examples trace back to mints in East Anglia, Kent, London, and the West Midlands. Fourteen of the coins survive fused together in two separate clusters of six and eight, recovered from what appear to have been rubbish pits, while the rest turned up scattered through nearby archaeological layers. “The coins aren’t pretty but they have a lot to say,” said Rory Naismith, Professor of Early Medieval English History at the University of Cambridge.

A Working Neighborhood, Not Just a Rest Stop

The low value of that single halfpenny matters more than it might seem. Such small denominations rarely show up in hoards, which are typically built from wealth deliberately set aside rather than spent. Its presence suggests these coins reflect money actually changing hands in daily transactions. That reading fits with everything else found at the site: evidence of leather-, bone-, and metalworking across at least 3,000 square meters, roughly half the size of a football pitch. Despite that craft activity, researchers found no indication silver itself was being worked there, which makes it unlikely the coins were simply imported scrap destined for melting down. “The Anglo-Saxons are there to visit the Pope and tour churches in Rome, but they’ve still got to feed themselves,” Naismith said. “So they’ve got to make things and trade. This was a fairly big community, probably hundreds of people, living there on a permanent basis.”

Known From Texts, Now Confirmed by Objects

This neighborhood, called the Schola Saxonum, had long been documented in written sources going back to the Liber Pontificalis by the year 799, sitting between St. Peter’s Basilica and the Tiber near a river landing known as the Portus Maior. Its memory survives today in the Roman district of Borgo and in nearby street and church names like Lungotevere in Sassia and Santo Spirito in Sassia. Notable figures connected to the community include Cædwalla, king of Wessex, who traveled to Rome, was baptized by Pope Sergius I, and died soon after around the end of the seventh century, and Burgred, king of Mercia, who fled there after Viking invasions and was buried in the Schola’s church. A papal document from 1053 even confirms a special privilege letting English people who died within the Schola be buried there. “Before this big discovery, we never had any material remains of the English quarter in Rome,” said Francesca Tinti, Professor of Medieval History at the University of the Basque Country and a visiting research fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge. “We’ve been hoping this moment might come for most of our careers.”

Money From England, Nowhere Else

Rome in this period generally expected payments in papal currency, and written sources rarely describe foreign coins circulating there. The Anglo-Saxon pennies found at Palazzo della Rovere stand out precisely because that’s exactly what they appear to represent: an exception to the usual rule. “You don’t find other foreign coins in Rome from this period,” Naismith said. “It seems to be very much an English thing. There are not many coins from the Frankish world or even northern Italy.” Naismith went further still, noting that more Anglo-Saxon coins from this period have now been found in Rome than coins minted by the papacy itself, evidence of an unusually large amount of money flowing in from England at the time.

A Debt to Alfred the Great?

Most of the Anglo-Saxon coins found in Rome date to between roughly 900 and 970, right after a period of especially close ties between Alfred the Great and the papacy. According to Alfred’s biographer Asser, Pope Marinus I freed the Schola Saxonum from every tribute and toll at Alfred’s request around 883. Nobody can prove this privilege extended to using English coins as valid currency, but researchers think it’s a plausible explanation for why Anglo-Saxon pennies circulated in Rome on a scale unmatched by any other foreign currency. “The English in Rome were quite unique,” Tinti said. “They made the greatest effort to get there. Their journey was really dangerous and many people died on the way. But once in Rome, they were special.”

A Relationship That Outlasted Alfred

England’s connection to Rome didn’t end with Alfred’s generation. The practice of sending Peter’s Pence, an annual English payment to Rome, developed over the course of the 10th century, and in 1027, King Cnut personally traveled to Rome to negotiate directly with the pope over charges affecting English travelers. For Naismith, the coins complicate the popular image of Anglo-Saxon England as a society cut off on Europe’s edge. “The Anglo-Saxons were very firmly a part of the European community,” he said. “They kept these bonds with Rome going strong for hundreds of years, through thick and thin. It’s not just kings sending money and forgetting about it. It’s people going to Rome in large numbers and setting up a home away from home on the banks of the Tiber.” The full research appears in a newly published volume, Rome and the Others (300-1000): Foreigners in the City between Conflicts and Integration, with contributions from Marzia Di Mento, Rory Naismith, Valentina Pica, Filippo Salamone, and Francesca Tinti.

Sources

This report draws on the University of Cambridge’s own announcement, with additional details from Medievalists.net.