Archaeologists in Italy painstakingly restored an ancient marble floor they discovered underwater. It was built in the town of Baia towards the end of the Roman Empire, which fell in 476 C.E. Today, it is part of the Archaeological Marine Park of Baia, the largest of its kind in the world.
Ancient Roman Floor Used Secondhand Marble
Last year, archaeologists announced the discovery of an ancient marble floor in a submerged Roman villa. Located in the ancient spa town of Baia (or Baiae), the floor dates back to the final years of the Roman Empire. It spans about 2,700 feet and was built with fragments of used marble, likely due to financial strain befalling even the wealthiest citizens of the declining empire. The archaeologists described the floor as “a very costly and demanding endeavor for the owner of the villa, who had to settle for recycled materials, that is, secondhand marbles, to create the chosen module, made up of adjoining squares, each with inscribed circles.”
The colorful and complex marble design is an opus sectile floor—a decorative style comprising carefully cut pieces of stone or marble laid in intricate geometric patterns or even pictorial designs. While mosaics are made with small, uniformly-sized pieces, opus sectile uses larger pieces in different shapes that fit together. The opus sectile technique incorporates an eye-catching variety of colors and materials and facilitates elaborate detail. In the Roman Empire, it was often used to indicate the wealth and good taste of a building’s inhabitants.
The Challenges of Underwater Archaeology
The restoration of the ancient marble floor is part of ongoing excavations of the Roman Empire’s underwater relics. It is an ambitious collaboration between CSR Restauro Beni Culturali and Naumacos Underwater Archaeology & Technology. Archaeologists at the site emphasized the unique difficulty of underwater excavations. They explained, “Thousands of marble slabs, hundreds of different shapes, assembled to create an intricate geometry. We are in the Submerged Park of Baiae and this marble floor has been the subject of the latest underwater restoration works: a very complicated new challenge due to the extreme fragmentation of the remains and their large extent.”
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From Bathers to Snorkelers: Centuries of Tourism at Baia
The partly submerged ruins of Baia are on the northwest shore of the Gulf of Naples in the modern-day commune of Bacoli, Italy. Once a seaside spa town frequented by Caligula and Nero, Baia was beloved for its mild climate, thermal springs, opulent villas, and hedonistic environment. Its location near Portus Julius, an important commercial port, also helped make it a renowned, if notorious, tourist hotspot.
After the fall of the Roman Empire, Baia slowly sank below sea level due to bradyseism—a type of ground surface deformation caused by volcanic activity. As a result, the ruins of Baia are now partially submerged. Mosaics, marble floors, imperial baths, and statues from Baia have been found underwater in recent years. To protect these findings, the Archaeological Marine Park of Baia opened in 2002. Today, the park operates eight archaeological sites that are accessible to snorkelers and scuba divers.
