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Modern photograph of the Arch of Trajan, Ancona · Wikimedia Commons
Ancona
Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 387 BCE (Syracusan Greek)
Adriatic naval harbor. Trajan enlarged its port; his commemorative arch was dedicated in 115 CE, two years before our snapshot.
A living port city of around 100,000 on the Adriatic; Trajan's Arch still overlooks the working harbor it was built to commemorate.
Excavation history
1810
Abbot Antonio Leoni — Identified Roman masonry embedded in the walls and arches of the Bonarelli family's palace, leading to the rediscovery of Ancona's buried Roman amphitheatre.
1929-1937
Archaeological Department of Le Marche — The amphitheatre's southern sector was excavated in the 1930s, with findings published by Giuseppe Moretti in 1930 and 1937.
Notable finds
Augustus Capite Velato
Workers digging nine meters underground in 1863 struck this 48cm marble portrait head right beneath the spot where the museum now stands — Ancona's own Roman forum. It shows Augustus veiled as Pontifex Maximus, mid-ritual, in near-perfect condition.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche
Grave Goods of the Ancona Necropolis
Ancona's Hellenistic-to-Roman necropolis gave up colored glass vessels, gold earrings, and silver tableware buried with its dead — unique testimony to trade wealth on the Adriatic coast. Combs, inkwells, and inscribed grave stelae recovered alongside them even preserve some of the deceased's names.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche
Funerary Stelae of the Villarey Necropolis
Construction of a parking lot behind the old Villarey barracks uncovered roughly 450 tombs, among them carved limestone grave markers bearing Greek inscriptions and farewell scenes dated to the 2nd-1st century BCE. Fourteen of the figured stelae survive well enough to read.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale delle Marche
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →