• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

This Italian McDonald’s Has Something Unique Inside – A Roman Road And Three Skeletons

January 12, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

On the outskirts of Rome, there is the Colli Albani: a series of towns renowned for their delicious traditional regional cuisine. But we are going to suggest that if you’re passing through Marino, you stop at a McDonald’s – because underneath it, you can explore an ancient Roman road and see the burial place of three Romans.

The road is a diverticulum, a road off the famous Via Appia. The Appian Way was one of the oldest and most important roads ever built during the Roman Republic. It connected Rome to the southern city of Brindisi, extending for 195 kilometers (132 miles) and a modern version of the road continues to exist and be used today. It is possible to walk most of the old road, too. A lot of this ancient road and the smaller roads that spread from it fell into disuse during the later years of the empire, and this is the fate of this part of the road.

Advertisement
A photo of the archeological area underneath the restaurant. One of the tomb is visible to the right.  A school group can be seen in the distance.

The road and one of the skeletons located underneath the restaurant. Image Credit: McDonald’s shared with permission.

At some point between the second and third century CE, this portion of the road stopped being used. It began to be covered, first in soil and then in vegetation. It is only then that the location is used as a burial site – on that portion of the road, extending for 45 meters (147.6 feet) under the restaurant, there are three burials. The burials were on the ancient drainage canal, next to a wall that remains upright today. We know that Roman cement is extremely durable, potentially having self-healing properties.

The three people buried appeared to have been male, possibly buried in coffins or shrouds. However, nothing including personal effects remain, only their skeletons. From those, archeologists have determined that the older person was between 35 and 45 and had lost a few molars during his life, maybe due to age, illness, or just malnutrition. He had a fracture on his right leg that led to a bigger femur, which might have led him to have difficulties moving. He worked strenuously throughout his life, as his vertebrae suggest.

The other two tombs belonged to much younger people, both teenagers. There is no evidence of illnesses from the skeletons, only some malnutrition and cavities. For all three, it is not clear what the cause of death was.

Advertisement

The whole area was discovered in 2014, as workers began to build the restaurant. This is not the only portion of this road that has survived, other stretches of the road exist. Unfortunately, areas immediately to the west and east no longer do. They were excavated and destroyed long before, to build the modern Appian road on one side and a warehouse (that no longer exists) on the other. At least this area has been preserved.

Who knows what the Romans might make of having a whole fast-food restaurant above one of their roads? They did love their service stations. Just further along the way, there was a place known as Tres Tabernae – three shops – where there was a general store, a blacksmith, and a refreshment house along connections to three important roads connecting to the Appian way.    

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Cricket-West Indies recall experienced Rampaul to T20 World Cup squad
  2. Zola Electric closes $90M funding round to scale technology and enter new markets
  3. Grow Therapy plants $15M into helping therapists start their own practices
  4. Samsung Electronics likely to report best quarterly profit in 3 years

Source Link: This Italian McDonald’s Has Something Unique Inside – A Roman Road And Three Skeletons

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • If Birds Are Dinosaurs, Why Are None As Big As T. Rexes?
  • Psychologists Demonstrate Illusion That Could Be Screwing Up Our Perception Of Time
  • Why Are So Many Enormous Roman Shoes Being Discovered At Hadrian’s Wall?
  • Scientists Think They’ve Pinpointed Structural Differences In Psychopaths’ Brains
  • We’ve Found Our Third-Ever Interstellar Visitor, Orcas Filmed Kissing (With Tongues) In The Wild, And Much More This Week
  • The “Eyes Of Clavius” Will Be Visible On The Moon Today, Thanks To Clair-Obscur Effect
  • Shockingly High Microplastic Levels Found On Remote Mediterranean Coral Reef Island
  • Interstellar Object, Cheesy Nightmares, And Smooching Orcas
  • World’s Largest Martian Meteorite Up For Auction Could Reach Whopping $2-4 Million
  • Kimalu The Beluga Whale Undergoes Pioneering Surgery And Becomes First Beluga To Survive General Aesthetic
  • The 1986 Soviet Space Mission That’s Never Been Repeated: Mir To Salyut And Back Again
  • Grisly Incident In Yellowstone National Park Shows Just How Dangerous This Vibrant Wilderness Can Be
  • Out Of All Greenhouse Gas Emitters On Earth, One US Organization Takes The Biscuit
  • Overly Ambitious Adder Attempts To Eat Hare 10 Times Its Mass In Gnarly Video
  • How Fast Does A Spacecraft Need To Go To Escape The Solar System?
  • President Trump’s Cuts To USAID Could Result In A “Staggering” 14 Million Avoidable Deaths By 2030
  • Dzo: Hybrids Beasts That Are Perfectly Crafted For Life On Earth’s Highest Mountains
  • “Rarest Event Ever” Had A Half-Life 1 Trillion Times Longer Than The Age Of The Universe – How Did We See It?
  • Meet The Bille, A Self-Righting Tetrahedron That Nobody Was Sure Could Exist
  • Neurogenesis Confirmed: Adult Brains Really Do Make New Hippocampal Neurons
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version