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Modern photograph of the Roman amphitheatre at Luni · Wikimedia Commons
Luni
Italia · Roman province·Italy·Founded 177 BCE (Roman colony)
Roman Luna, the marble port. All the white Carrara marble that clad imperial Rome shipped from here.
An uninhabited archaeological park near the Tuscany-Liguria border, abandoned after its harbor silted up in the Middle Ages, with a museum nearby at Ortonovo.
Excavation history
1950s
Italian state archaeological authorities — Proper systematic archaeological excavation of the Roman colony of Luna began in the 1950s, after centuries of the site lying abandoned and buried near the coast.
1970s
Antonio Frova (University of Milan, for the Liguria Archaeological Superintendency) — A meticulous, scientific excavation campaign under the Liguria Archaeological Superintendency produced the standard scholarly account of the site.
Notable finds
Mosaic of Medusa and the Double Silenus
This black-and-white corridor mosaic from a Luni townhouse hides a second face in its design: read one way it shows Medusa, read upside down it becomes a bearded Silenus, a trick meant to ward off the evil eye from the household.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Luni
Ocean Mosaic
Excavators lifted this floor mosaic depicting the god Oceanus from another Roman house at Luni, ranking it among the site's finest domestic decorations.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Luni
Dedication Base to the Goddess Luna
An inscribed marble base recovered from the Great Temple on the Capitolium's northern flank names the city's own namesake deity, Luna, in a temple that once faced the forum from a raised platform overlooking the colony founded in 177 BCE.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Luni
Bronze Torches of the Cult Statue of Luna
Archaeologist Raffaele Inglieri excavated these fragile gilded-bronze-and-iron torch fragments from the Temple of Luna in 1953, at first mistaking them for table legs, before they were recognized as light-bearing attributes once held by the goddess's own cult statue.
Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Luni
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