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No Rainbow Required

By JARRETT A. LOBELL

January/February 2019

Trenches Italy Como Soapstone VesselOn the site of Como’s former Cressoni Theater, once one of northern Italy’s great opera houses, excavators have found a soapstone vessel filled with hundreds of Late Antique gold coins. The location, now slated for luxury apartments, is close to the forum of Novum Comum, a settlement founded by Julius Caesar in 59 B.C. Thus far, conservators have removed several dozen coins from the vessel and identified five emperors’ portraits, all dating to the fourth and fifth centuries A.D., depicted on the coins.