Source: UFO ROUNDUP (Volume 3, Number 13)
Date: Saturday, March 29th 1998
Editor: Joseph Trainor

An unusual wall painting discovered in Rome by Italian archeologists has raised eyebrows in the Fortean community. The fresco shows an ancient Italian city...from the air!

According to the Reuters report, "An Italian archeologist has stumbled on a richly colored wall fresco, thought to be about 2,000 years old, showing a detailed cityscape that experts say could be a bird's-eye view of ancient Rome."

"The depiction of a walled city measuring about 12 feet wide by eight feet wide, was discovered during an excavation of a dank passageway at the Trajan Baths near Rome's Colosseum."

"A pale bridge resembling Florence's Ponte Vecchio arches over an azure river in one corner of the fresco. Elsewhere is a bright red theater with a white roof and a cluster of houses."

"On the painting's right flank is a large city square of tomato-red buildings, built around a set of ocher daubs that archeologists said represented bronze statues."

"The city wall is broken at one point by a gateway topped with cream bell-like towers."

"'It's impressionistic,' said Rita Volpe, Rome City Council archeologist. 'The period is certainly the second half of the first century after Christ."

"Nero, emperor from A.D. 54 to 68, committed suicide shortly after his sumptuous palace was finished. A later emperor, Vespasian, tore it down and built the Colosseum on one of its lakes."

"Trajan,who ruled Rome from 98 to 117, later built the baths on top of the rest of the (Nero's) complex. Archeologists said the fresco almost certainly predated Trajan, because when his baths were constructed, the walls were bricked up, covering the painting."

"Volpe said it was unclear whether the artist had depicted Rome or whether the cityscape was imaginary."

"'It's certainly a city, but I can't say which city it is. It could be an ideal city,' she said." (See the New York Daily News for March 8, 1998, page 52.) (Editor's Comment: I think the fresco is 1,200 years older than Nero's palace. Here's why:

(1) Roman civilization lasted only 800 years. Not long enough to produce "impressionist" art. Roman painting and sculpture, like the Etruscans before them, was painstakingly realistic.

(2) Ponte Vecchio-type bridges and "cream bell-like towers" are not features of Roman architecture.

(3) "Bright red" multi-story buildings are not mentioned in either Roman or Etruscan literature.

(4) Rome was built on the ruins of an earlier city, Saturnia, just as today's Mexico City was built on the Aztec city of Tenochtitlan.

(5) Saturnia was overrun by northern barbarians, the Rasenna, who later became the Etruscans, about the time of the Trojan War in 1,200 B.C. Just as the Vandals overran and sacked Rome itself in 410 A.D.

My theory: The fresco is a remnant of that lost Italian civilization of Saturnia. Remember the strange "Cicero's Daughter" case, that weird catacomb found under Rome's Capitoline Hill back in the Middle Ages?)

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