Aquinum’s Roman sewers, 120 coins and a slab of buried lightning

Beneath farm fields in central Italy, a Roman town is giving up its secrets one layer at a time. Archaeologists working at Aquinum have mapped sewers and tunnels under the baths and the theatre, found a hoard of 120 coins, and recovered a marble slab that records a rare ritual: the burial of a place struck by lightning. After 18 years of research, they have uncovered only a small slice of the city.

A Roman town under the fields of Aquino

Aquinum lies near modern Aquino in the province of Frosinone, about 60 miles south of Rome. It stood on the Via Latina, the road that linked Rome with Capua, and it covered an estimated 250 acres. The ancient writer Cicero mentioned the town in connection with its purple dye, and tradition links it to the satirist Juvenal. Its name also connects to Thomas Aquinas, whose family held the nearby castle of Roccasecca.

The University of Salento has led excavations here for 18 years. In that time, the team has opened roughly 20 of the city’s 250 acres. Earlier seasons uncovered a large bath complex with well-preserved mosaics. The latest work looks below the surface as well as at it.

Mapping the sewers and tunnels

The specialist group Roma Sotterranea has worked alongside the archaeologists since 2020. From 2020 to 2023, its team documented more than 790 feet of underground conduits beneath the Central Baths. Since 2024, the focus has shifted to the theatre, which may have held about 5,000 spectators.

Earlier in 2026, the researchers located the main sewer collector beneath the crossing of the Cardo Maximus and the Decumanus Maximus, the two principal streets of the Roman grid. The channel measures about 4.5 feet wide and more than 7 feet high. The team also used a robotic inspection system with a cable up to 330 feet long, along with ground-penetrating radar, to explore spaces that people cannot easily enter.

Project director Francesco Artibani of Roma Sotterranea said of the underground work: “What we are searching for underground can help us understand how it actually worked.” The HeritageDaily report also mentions a hoard of 120 coins, along with inscriptions and pottery. It does not say exactly when or where each of those items turned up, so we cannot confirm that the coins came from the sewer itself.

A sacrifice scene, an altar and buried lightning

Three finds from 2026 stand out for what they say about Roman religion. The first is a carved stone showing an ox, a ram and a pig. Together, those three animals evoke the suovetaurilia, one of Rome’s most solemn sacrifices. Builders later reused the stone as paving at a crossroads, so its original location remains uncertain. The Italian outlet Finestre sull’Arte reports that it may name a dedicant called Caius Ammius Cammarus, although the reading of the name is not yet certain.

The second is a marble altar dedicated to the Genius of Augustus. A newly found fragment let the team reconstruct part of its inscription, which also names the Lares of Augustus and the Genius of the Colony. The dedicant was Manius Popidius Anteros, a wealthy freedman who served as a sevir Augustalis, an office that gave former slaves a public role in the imperial cult.

The third is a marble slab from the theatre inscribed FVL(GVR) C[ONDITVM]. Romans used this formula to mark a spot hit by lightning. They buried the objects and debris the strike left behind and consecrated the ground. The slab therefore points to a “buried lightning” ritual performed at the theatre.

Why this matters

Sewers rarely make headlines, yet they show how a Roman city handled water, waste and flooding. Mapping the drains under the baths, the theatre and the main crossroads helps researchers connect the layout of the streets with the buildings above them. The religious finds add a second layer: they show how ordinary civic life, from sacrifices to imperial loyalty to the fear of lightning, shaped the town.

The team also restored five marble portrait heads, including the so-called Caesar of Aquinum. Artibani described the long-term plan for the site this way: “A city that, for the most part, will remain there, buried and preserved in the ground.”

Caveats and open questions

Several details remain unclear. The coin hoard has no published date, count by type or exact findspot in the reports we could read. The dedicant name on the sacrifice stone is still tentative. The press coverage also gives no firm date for the sewers, so the “2,000-year-old” label in popular summaries is a rough estimate based on the Roman setting, not a dating result. Finally, only about 8 percent of the city has been excavated, so the full picture will take many more seasons to emerge.

For now, Aquinum shows how much a Roman town can hide just a few feet below a farmer’s plough.

Sources

• Ancient Rome Live, cited by HeritageDaily as the source for the Aquinum reports (University of Salento and Roma Sotterranea)
• Finestre sull’Arte: Aquino (Frosinone): The University of Salento Discovers Two Artifacts Linked to Roman Religion, 5 October 2026
• HeritageDaily: Roman city beneath Italian fields reveals hidden network of sewers and tunnels, 3 November 2026