Aerial photographs taken during a drought two years ago have enabled Italian researchers to produce the most detailed map ever of the ancient Roman city of Altinum, considered by some historians to be the ancestor of modern-day Venice.
The dryness of the landscape enabled the team from the University of Padua to see evidence of 2,000-year-old structures beneath the soil -- including remnants of churches, city walls, gates and even a theater, according to the research published in this week's edition of the journal Science.
Like Venice, Altinum sat in the large lagoon connected to the Adriatic Sea that is now known as the Venice Lagoon. At around 200 square miles, it is one of the largest bodies of water of its kind in the world. Larger than Pompeii, Altinum was among the most influential cities in northern Italy during Roman times and home to as many as 20,000 people, according to Alessandro Fontana, one of the researchers who produced the map.
In the 1st century BC, "Altinum was a quite important harbor," said Fontana, a professor in the university's geography department. "Archaeologists consider it to be like a maritime emporium where traders arrived from all around the Mediterranean."
Altinum had also been famous since the Iron Age for wool production and horse breeding, Fontana said.
Creating this new map of one of the Roman Empire's great cities was possible because Altinum, unlike most ancient cities in Europe, was not built over by later generations. As a result, the researchers were able to use aerial photographs to peer beneath the modern farmland covering the ancient city to reveal subsurface stones, bricks and compacted soil. The severe drought of 2007, which dried up vegetation in the area, also made it easier for the visible-light and near-infrared cameras to reveal the structure of the city.
Today, about 11% of the lagoon is permanently covered by open water, and around 80% consists of mud flats, tidal shallows and salt marshes.
As with Venice, life in Altinum was dominated by water.
Residents willingly accepted the curse of mosquitoes and other insects in exchange for the relative safety of life protected from land invaders, according to Fontana. The resources of the lagoon itself -- fish, game and salt -- would have been an additional inducement to settlers, Fontana said, along with a direct route to the Adriatic.
