ROME, ITALY—Wanted in Rome reports that traces of a garden thought to have belonged to the emperor Caligula, who ruled from A.D. 37 to 41, were uncovered in Rome’s Piazza Pia during a construction project. The traces include a travertine wall, the foundations of a colonnaded portico overlooking the right bank of the Tiber River, and a lead water pipe inscribed with the name of the emperor. Caligula’s garden was described by Philo of Alexandria, a first-century Jewish leader and philosopher who wrote of a meeting between Caligula and a legation of Alexandrian Jews in a garden with a monumental portico overlooking the Tiber River. Other inscribed lead pipes uncovered in the area suggest that the residence passed from Livia Drusilla, second wife of the emperor Augustus and grandmother of Germanicus, to Germanicus and then to his wife, Agrippina the Elder, who bequeathed it to her son, Caligula. To read more about the gardens of the Roman Empire, go to "The Archaeology of Gardens: Villa Gardens."
