Columbarium found in Rome

[Elisa]

Source: Ansa

A perfectly preserved altar in white marble with the story of a young Roman girl, Valeria, who died at the age of 13 years and 7 months, was found together with precious fragments of a marble sarcophagus decorated with refined hunting scenes, thought to date back to the 2nd century CE.
They come from an excavation in via Luigi Tosti, Rome.

The excavation has brought to light a funerary building that was part of the necropolis of the ancient Via Latina with cinerary urns, interment burials and marble remains of great interest. The altar of the very young Valeria was found two metres below the current road level. On the epigraph we can read the dedication: «Valeria P F Laeta vixit annis XIII m VII». According to the first hypotheses of study, the inscription, in Latin capital, could be read as: «Valeria Laeta daughter of P [ublio] lived 13 years and 7 months».

The small columbarium (4 meters by 3 meters), probably hypogeum, was built in the natural tuff bank and consisted of 80-centimetre concrete masonry covered with a brick facing, opus latericium, of excellent workmanship. The walls were covered with plaster painted in yellow and red, to emulate marble slabs. The building appears to have been heavily damaged, so much so that it cannot be excluded that it may have been demolished during the urbanization of the neighborhood, which took place in the 1930s.