by Jon Lackman | 10 October 2006 | Ancient
From Bloomberg News: Beginning Oct. 13, “Visitors to the Vatican will be able to view its museums’ latest addition: a 2,000-year-old pagan burial ground filled with mausoleums, scattered bones and headstones, including one that belonged to one of Nero’s slaves. The cemetery almost never saw the light of day in modern times. The Vatican announced its discovery almost four years ago after a truck was spotted hauling tombstones with Latin `inscriptions on the construction site for a parking lot … It will be years before the conservation is completed, said Giandomenico Spinola, the archaeologist heading up the excavation … ‘We dug up a small cemetery Pompey’ … In all, there are 500 to 600 people buried in about 250 tombs, containing layers of generations, tracing pagan Rome to the birth of Christianity, Francesco Buranelli, director of the museums, said in an interview.”
