- An unusual wall painting discovered in
Rome by Italian archeologists has raised eyebrows in the Fortean community.
The fresco shows an ancient Italian city...from the air!
-
- According to the Reuters report, "An
Italian archeologist has stumbled on a richly colored wall fresco, thought
to be about 2,000 years old, showing a detailed cityscape that experts
say could be a bird's-eye view of ancient Rome."
-
- "The depiction of a walled city
measuring about 12 feet wide by eight feet wide, was discovered during
an excavation of a dank passageway at the Trajan Baths near Rome's Colosseum."
-
- "A pale bridge resembling Florence's
Ponte Vecchio arches over an azure river in one corner of the fresco.
Elsewhere is a bright red theater with a white roof and a cluster of houses."
"On the painting's right flank is a large city square of tomato-red
buildings, built around a set of ocher daubs that archeologists said represented
bronze statues."
-
- "The city wall is broken at one
point by a gateway topped with cream bell-like towers."
-
- "'It's impressionistic,' said Rita
Volpe, Rome City Council archeologist. 'The period is certainly the second
half of the first century after Christ." "Nero, emperor from
A.D. 54 to 68, committed suicide shortly after his sumptuous palace was
finished. A later emperor, Vespasian, tore it down and built the Colosseum
on one of its lakes."
-
- "Trajan,who ruled Rome from 98 to
117, later built the baths on top of the rest of the (Nero's) complex.
Archeologists said the fresco almost certainly predated Trajan, because
when his baths were constructed, the walls were bricked up, covering the
painting."
-
- "Volpe said it was unclear whether
the artist had depicted Rome or whether the cityscape was imaginary."
"'It's certainly a city, but I can't say which city it is. It could
be an ideal city,' she said." (See the New York Daily News for March
8, 1998, page 52.) (Editor's Comment: I think the fresco is 1,200 years
older than Nero's palace. Here's why:
-
- (1) Roman civilization lasted only
800 years.
- Not long enough to produce "impressionist"
art.
- Roman painting and sculpture, like the
Etruscans
- before them, was painstakingly realistic.
- (2) Ponte Vecchio-type bridges and
"cream
- bell-like towers" are not features
of Roman architecture.
- (3) "Bright red" multi-story
buildings are not
- mentioned in either Roman or Etruscan
literature.
- (4) Rome was built on the ruins
of an earlier
- city, Saturnia, just as today's Mexico
City was built
- on the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.
- (5) Saturnia was overrun by northern
barbarians,
- the Rasenna, who later became the Etruscans,
about
- the time of the Trojan War in 1,200 B.C.
Just as the
- Vandals overran and sacked Rome itself
in 410 A.D.
- My theory: The fresco is a remnant
of that lost
- Italian civilization of Saturnia. Remember
the strange
- "Cicero's Daughter" case, that
weird catacomb found
- under Rome's Capitoline Hill back in
the Middle Ages?)
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