A Roman basilica designed by Vitruvius, a leading architect of classical architecture during antiquity, was unearthed in central Italy.
Dating to the late 1st century BC, the basilica is thought to be the only building known to have been explicitly designed and supervised by Vitruvius himself.
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman architect and military engineer famous for his treatise De Architectura and the earliest extant comprehensive work on architectural theory. A multi-volume book that he authored in the Augustan period, it included codes of proportion, symmetry and construction that would govern Western architectural thought for over two millennia.
Although Vitruvius mentions many buildings in his work, the basilica at Fano is the only building he clearly identifies as his own design. The remains were discovered during a rescue excavation underneath the Piazza Andrea Costa in the now-Roman city of Fano, conducted in the lead-up to a proposed urban reconstruction.
Archaeologists have emphasised the significance of the discovery, observing that the uncovered structures correspond very precisely to the highly detailed information which Vitruvius provides, as revealed by the description of the basilica in De Architectura.
Scholars have been arguing for hundreds of years about the location or even the existence of the building, with prior excavations in Fano sometimes proposed, but never conclusively demonstrated.
Excavations demonstrate that the basilica had a strictly rectangular plan with a very targeted columnar arrangement. According to Vitruvius, its long side toward the forum was expressed through eight columns, four at each of the shorter ends.
In a bid to retain visual access to adjacent civic and religious spaces, two central columns on one side were deliberately left out. Fieldwork and stratigraphic examination have supported these proportions, as well as the size of the structure.
Column bases measure about five feet in diameter, and surviving architectural elements suggest an approximate height of fifteen feet overall.
The structure was destroyed in the years of late antiquity, but its rediscovery clears more than five centuries of speculation. There is also ongoing work in stabilising and conserving the remains, while securing funds for a prolonged excavation and interdisciplinary research.
