Dumpster Diver Discovers History

News Desk

Italy: About two dozen bronze statues dating from the 3rd century BC to the 1st century AD have been discovered in the ruins of ancient spas in Europe with the help of a former garbage collector.

A month after the discovery of the Etruscan and Roman statues in Italy, they will be put on display at the Quirinal Palace in Rome on June 22. When the discovery of the statues was announced in November, experts described them as the largest collection of ancient bronze statues ever found in Italy.

The statues were discovered in 2021 and 2022 in the Italian mountain village of San Cassianodei Bagni, now famous for its baths, and archaeologists had long suspected that ancient statues might be found there. However, initial efforts to find these statues were unsuccessful.

The historian Agnes Carletti, a former scavenger, had it in his memory that many years ago he had seen some ancient Roman relics on a wall on the other side of a public bath. Mayor Agnes Carletti says excavations began in 2019 on a small plot of village land, and a week later ‘traces of some walls appeared’.

Despite lacking formal training or expertise in archaeology, Agnes Carletti contributed to the discovery of historical sculptures.

However, a retired garbage collector and local amateur historian, Stefano Petrini, had “a flash” of intuition, remembering that years earlier he had seen bits of ancient Roman columns on a wall on the other side of the public baths.

When Stefano Petrini told the archaeologists about the site, they immediately recognised it as the site where they had discovered the ancient sculptures.