Word: carettoni
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...pays the doctor? Such was the damage to the Colosseum and the nearby Forum in last month's swamping rains that Gian Filippo Carettoni, Rome's superintendent of antiquities, estimates cost of the immediate restoration of the Colosseum at $430,000 and, of the crumbling walls and underpinning of the Forum, another $4,000,000. But Rome has the highest municipal debt in Italy, around $3 billion: it is in effect bankrupt. And the deterioration of antica Roma is only one in a series of revelations of decay in Italy's most famous monuments that have popped...
Only a few dim clues remain to suggest where the great emperor lived. But early this year Professor Gianfilippo Carettoni, a government archaeologist, started searching for Augustus' house on the Palatine. Diggers soon uncovered the tops of hefty brick foundation piers mingled with older stone walls outlining two rooms...
...fragment of painted plaster gave Professor Carettoni reason to hope that something interesting might be inside the rooms; with infinite patience he removed the earth and rubble from three sides...
...workers dug deeper, they began the first thorough housecleaning that the rooms had had in nearly 20 centuries. Bucket after bucket of earth was lifted out of the first room, and Carettoni spotted faint patterns on the inner plaster walls-well-preserved frescoes of the long-gone Augustan period...
...Though the frescoes are exceptional for their color and preservation," says Professor Carettoni, "they are most important for their location. Everything found so far indicates that this was the house of Augustus...
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