Gabriel Zuchtriegel

Archaeologists have unearthed a remarkable piece of ancient history in Pompeii, revealing a hidden gem that transports us back to the era of Emperor Augustus. Nestled within the ruins of this legendary Roman city lies a dining hall unlike any other, adorned with captivating frescoes dating back two millennia, Reuters reported.

A black-walled dining hall with 2,000-year-old paintings inspired by the Trojan War has been discovered during excavations at the Roman city of Pompeii, authorities have said.

A lavish painting of a mythological scene was among several newly discovered frescoes revealed on March 1 by archaeologists excavating the ancient Roman city of Pompeii.

Still astonishingly colorful some 2,000 years after the city was wiped out by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, the frescoes were unearthed during restoration work around the mansion of the House of Leda.

Even the ancient Romans liked their pizza. Archaeologists in Pompeii said on June 27 they had found depicted on an ancient fresco the precursor to the modern-day pizza but without the cheese and tomatoes.

The newly restored remains of an opulent house in Pompeii that likely belonged to two former slaves who became rich through the wine trade offer visitors an exceptional peek at details of domestic life in the doomed Roman city.

Raunchy scenes may redden faces at a new exhibition in Pompeii on art and sexuality in the ancient Roman city, where sculptures and paintings of breasts and buttocks abound.

Archaeologists excavating the city, which was destroyed by the eruption of nearby Vesuvius in 79 A.D., were initially startled to discover erotic images everywhere, from garden statues to ceiling frescos.

In a few horrible hours, Pompeii was turned from a vibrant city into an ash-embalmed wasteland, smothered by a furious volcanic eruption in A.D. 79. Then in this century, the excavated Roman city appeared alarmingly close to a second death, assailed by decades of neglect, mismanagement and scant systematic maintenance of the heavily visited ruins.

A German-born archaeologist has been chosen to be the next director of Pompeii, which is still revealing its ancient mysteries centuries after a volcanic eruption destroyed the Roman city and is one of Italy's most popular tourist sites.

Culture Minister Dario Franceschini announced on Feb. 20 that Gabriel Zuchtriegel won out over 43 other candidates for the job.

More than 200 ancient coins were returned on Jan. 21 to a museum in southern Italy by a priest who was told about the theft in confession.

The unnamed penitent, presumed to be the thief himself, asked the priest to return the loot to the Paestum archaeological park near Naples.

Ahead of the Colosseum and Pompeii, the towering Greek temple complex at Paestum near Naples is the first Italian archaeological site to reopen to tourists after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.