The Gym Was Always the Most Interesting Room in the Building

Some students ditch gym class. These students found a Roman domus underneath their gym.

Generations of students at a Rome high school a short walk from the Colosseum had passed down the same rumor: there were rooms under the gym floor that nobody could reach. Several of them eventually went looking on their own, found something ancient in the dark, and then told an adult. Their history and Latin teacher, Claudia Marino, took the accounts seriously enough to report the find to the Special Superintendency of Rome.

The discovery began during a 2021 student protest, when teenagers occupied the building and found a key to a locked iron door in the basement. Past a disused boiler room, they squeezed through a narrow gap and entered ancient corridors with colorful frescoes and intricate mosaics still on the walls.

Archaeologists from the Special Superintendency began excavations in September 2025, with a formal dig underway from January 2026. A public announcement on May 28 confirmed what the students had actually found: a mid-Imperial domus, now named the Domus Liceo Cavour.

The excavation revealed figurative and floral frescoes on the walls, stucco along the vaulted ceilings, and in one room, a mosaic of large, irregularly shaped tiles, a style fashionable among elite Romans of the period. A lead water pipe found during the building's 19th-century construction bore inscriptions naming two occupants: L. Fabius Gallus, a Roman senator, and later a woman named Umbria Albina. The neighborhood carries significant weight: Cicero, Pompey and Octavian all lived there, though modern construction has made it one of the least-excavated corridors in Rome.

Archaeologists also found graffiti left by students, tourists and other visitors during the 20th century. Only a portion of the domus has been excavated; it extends further beneath the school, and additional digs are planned. The school and the archaeological superintendency hope to eventually open the site to visitors, with students serving as guides.

Rumors had circulated for years before students squeezed through the iron door in the boiler room. On the other side: a second-century senator's dining room, still decorated.

Read the full story at Live Science, June 4, 2026

Hot Take: Every school has an urban legend about its history. And every school is wrong, except this one, in Rome. The line between "ghost story" and "archaeologically significant" is apparently just one iron door.