MILAN, ITALY—A temple thought to have been dedicated to the goddess Minerva has been discovered beneath Milan’s cathedral, and a stone floor and a section of an arcade of the ancient Mediolanum Forum have been found under the basement of the seventeenth-century building that houses the historic art gallery, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, and the library, Biblioteca Ambrosiana. In A.D. 292 Mediolanum became the capital of the Western Roman Empire, and it remained so until 402.
Milan’s Ancient Past Unearthed
News January 31, 2014
Recommended Articles
Off the Grid November/December 2026
San Agustín, Colombia
Letter from Cape Canaveral November/December 2026
Dawn of the Space Age
Archaeologists have made surprising discoveries spanning 3,000 years at the birthplace of American space exploration
Features November/December 2026
Kingdom of Fortresses
How diverse and far-flung Iron Age chiefdoms united to challenge the Assyrian Empire
Features November/December 2026
A Tomb of One's Own
Life behind the scenes in Egypt’s Valley of the Kings
-
Features November/December 2013
Life on the Inside
Open for only six weeks toward the end of the Civil War, Camp Lawton preserves a record of wartime prison life
(Virginia Historical Society, Mss5.1.Sn237.1v.6p.139) -
Features November/December 2013
Vengeance on the Vikings
Mass burials in England attest to a turbulent time, and perhaps a notorious medieval massacre
(Courtesy Thames Valley Archaeological Services) -
Letter from Bangladesh November/December 2013
A Family's Passion
A father and son watched over a site in northeastern Bangladesh for decades before archaeologists came to see what was there
(Courtesy Reema Islam) -
Artifacts November/December 2013
Moche Ceremonial Shield
(Courtesy Lisa Trever, University of California, Berkeley)