FANO, ITALY—La Brújula Verde reports that a structure discovered in 2023 in eastern Italy’s city of Fano has been identified as a basilica designed by the Roman architect and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio, who wrote the treatise De Architectura in the first century B.C. The building matches a description in Book V of the work, with its rectangular plan surrounded by a peristyle of columns. Each column was about five feet in diameter and stood about 50 feet tall. Eight columns lined the long sides and four stood on the shorter sides. “After centuries of waiting and study, what for a long time was transmitted only through the written word has been transformed into a concrete, tangible, and shareable reality,” said Luca Serfilippi, mayor of Fano. Researchers will now work to conserve the remains of Vitruvius' basilica and prepare it for visitors. To read about Vitruvius' writing on materials used for home decor, go to "Painting by Roman Numerals."
