A marble floor of sunken Roman villa restored off the coast of southern Italy

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Reported by All That’s Interesting:

An underwater restoration project in Bacoli, Italy has revealed the marvelous marble floor of a submerged Roman villa. This comes as part of an ongoing excavation at the Submerged Archaeological Park of Baiae being carried out by CSR Restauro Beni Culturali and Naumacos Underwater Archaeology and Technology, shedding light on the most historically rich sunken corner of the Roman Empire.

In a Facebook post, the Parco Archeologico Campi Flegrei announced the discovery of the stunning marble floor near the submerged city of Basie, located next to present-day Naples. Per the post, the marble floor “has been the focus of the latest underwater restoration work,” which has been a “very complicated challenge due to the extreme fragmentation of the remains.”

The villa floor is sprawling, comprising roughly 2,700 square feet, built towards the end of the Roman Empire. It is an opus sectile floor, a type of decorative flooring used in ancient Roman architecture, characterized by the use of precisely cut pieces of stone or marble to create intricate geometric patterns or pictorial designs.

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