San Casciano like Riace, 24 bronze statues emerge from the water

An absolutely unique treasure, he underlines, which is accompanied by an incredible quantity of inscriptions in Etruscan and Latin and to which are added thousands of coins as well as a series of equally interesting vegetable offerings. In office for a few days, the Minister of Culture Gennaro Sangiuliano has already visited the restoration laboratory that has just welcomed the statues and is now applauding: An exceptional find that confirms once more that Italy is a country of immense treasures The stratification of different civilizations, a unicum of Italian culture, is passionate about the head of the Roman College. The most important discovery from the Riace Bronzes and certainly one of the most significant bronzes ever made in the history of the ancient Mediterranean, comments the director of the MiC museums Massimo Osanna, who has just approved the purchase of the sixteenth-century palace that will host in the Borgo di San Casciano the wonders returned by the Bagno Grande, a museum to which a real archaeological park will be added in the future. Luigi La Rocca, general director for archeology, shares the enthusiasm and underlines the importance of the method used in this excavation, which as was the case for the most recent discoveries in Pompeii, here too saw specialists from every discipline at work. from architects to geologists, from archaeobotanists to epigraphy and numismatics experts. Probably made by local artisans, the 24 newly found statues – explains Tabolli flanked by the director of the excavation Emanuele Mariotti and Ada Salvi of the Superintendency – can be dated between the 2nd century BC and the 1st after. The sanctuary, with its bubbling pools, sloping terraces, fountains, altars, existed at least from the third century BC and remained active until the fifth century AD, he says, when in Christian times it was closed but not destroyed, the tubs sealed with heavy stone columns, the deities entrusted with respect to the water. also for this reason that, having removed that cover, the archaeologists found themselves in front of a treasure still intact, in fact the largest deposit of statues in ancient Italy and in any case the only one of which we have the possibility to completely reconstruct the context, reiterates Tabolli .

What can I say, for us in San Casciano the sensational discovery that comes from the archaeological excavations of Bagno Grande a dream come true. Leather jacket and boots, the mayor Agnese Carletti moves safely among the mud and stones of the excavation site that for three years in the countryside of this Tuscan village has been bringing to light the remains of the sacred Etruscan and Roman baths. You talk about young people and you know what the mayor Carletti says: she too, just 37 years old, engaged in the administration of her country for eight years, a degree in philosophy and a contagious passion for challenges, has a future entirely to build. And a future in which the recovery of these pages of history from 2300 years ago has a decidedly important weight. Because on the bet to find the oldest thermal baths this country that still counts a lot on thermal tourism, so much so that it has brought back the swimming pools that the Medici frequented in the 1500s, you have invested a lot. And behind what today is beginning to emerge as a won challenge, there is also a story of women, of solidarity between generations and of a provincial community that struggles but does not give up. No more than 80 residents in the magnificent historic center, in all 1550 souls scattered in the countryside of its three hamlets, San Casciano ai Bagni, points out the first town, elected with the Democratic Party, a small town with all the problems common to deep Italy, the distant hospital, lack of services, inadequate roads, depopulation. There are oil and wine, of course.