Time.news – A surprise, but not too much. Find the remains of ancient Roman walls a few meters as the crow flies from the ancient Abellinum, it was a possibility. But when the excavator touched something solid, made up of tuffaceous material, the workers stopped. Storing fuel where there was a Roman settlement two thousand years earlier is certainly not possible.
A few centimeters of structure emerge from the excavations for the works in the sediment area of a fuel distribution plant along Via Appia in Atripalda, but for the experts of the Archaeological Superintendence of Campania, according to what Time.news learns, a few meters further in bottom there would be, intact perhaps, the amphitheater of the Roman city.
A little further on, a fence divides the Via Appia today from the town of the Samnites and the Romans, built in the fourth century BC, brought to light in private land and remained for many years ‘suspended’ in a legal dispute that ended with the return to private individuals of an archaeological park which included a Roman domus that belonged to a wealthy freedman, redeemed himself with a thriving business.
And all around the remains of the calidarium of a thermal structure, the forum, a section of the ancient Serino aqueduct and a piece of the elliptical structure of an amphitheater. The accidental discovery reasonably suggests that the walls found belong to the amphitheater of this Roman town. The construction site for the creation of the fuel station has been blocked.
© courtesy of the Campania Archaeological Superintendence
particular opus reticulatum Roman walls Atripalda
In the area there are the reinforced concrete blindi that the company should have placed right where the ancient walls emerged. The Superintendency has already carried out a first inspection e archaeologists have found damage due to building works carried out in the past, in the 70s, probably always for the installation of the fuel system. In that area of sedime the wall partitions emerged, made in opus reticulatum which can be found throughout the excavation of Abellinum. These also date back to the first century BC, as the archaeological evidence has already emerged.
The evaluations now pass to the archaeologists, who would already have a summary picture of what was found. It has also already been decided by the Superintendency to expand the survey area, because it is believed that the extension of the walls is quite another, an important portion of a suburb of the ancient Abellinum, a suburban neighborhood, in practice, beyond the surrounding walls. An excavation that promises surprises.
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