{"id":40395,"date":"2026-08-15T21:11:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-15T21:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/40395\/"},"modified":"2026-08-15T21:11:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-15T21:11:10","slug":"roman-shipwreck-believed-to-be-over-2000-years-old-discovered-in-sicily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/40395\/","title":{"rendered":"Roman shipwreck believed to be over 2,000 years old discovered in Sicily"},"content":{"rendered":"

An ancient Roman<\/a> shipwreck believed to be more than 2,000 years old was discovered in Sicily \u2014 along with hundreds of remarkably intact clay jars that may have once carried wine, olive oil and grain.<\/p>\n

Fisherman and diver\u00a0Giacomo de Mola discovered what he called an \u201cunderwater museum\u201d about three miles off the coast of Mazara del Vallo.<\/p>\n

The world champion spearfisher was exploring the area when his sonic radar picked up what he thought was a rock 150 feet below the surface.<\/p>\n

\"UnderwaterHundreds of clay jars were discovered 150 feet underwater. Instagram\/Ministero della Cultura<\/p>\n

But when he got closer, he discovered hundreds of amphorae<\/a> \u2014 ancient two-handled clay jars \u2014 scattered across a roughly 6-foot-by-70-foot area of seabed along with two large lead anchor stocks and a lead pipe.<\/p>\n

De Mola and his fellow diver and friend Igor Bisulli, alerted Italian authorities,\u00a0who confirmed it to be the remnants of a shipwreck that sank during the first or second century B.C., according to the CBC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Italian Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli described it as \u201cone of the most significant underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe sea continues to bring back precious fragments of our history, and the Mazara del Vallo wreck speaks to us of the people, the routes, and the exchanges that made the Mediterranean a crossroads of civilizations.\u201d<\/p>\n

A still-awestruck de Mola gushed in an Instagram post, \u201cThis is, without a doubt, the most incredible discovery of my life \u2026 A Roman ship slumbering in the silence of the Mediterranean.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An ancient Roman shipwreck believed to be more than 2,000 years old was discovered in Sicily \u2014 along…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":40396,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4837,327,1883,5,27,26551,243],"class_list":["post-40395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-italy","tag-discovery","tag-history","tag-instagram","tag-italy","tag-rome","tag-shipwrecks","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40395\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40396"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/italy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}