08/07/2025
The largest collection of bronzes found in Italy were discovered in 2019 at the ancient sacred baths at San Casciano dei Bagni near Siena. In one location, 24 bronzes were found in deep, anaerobic mud, preserved in an anaerobic state with zero oxygen present, which prevented oxidisation.
They date to between the 2nd century BC and the 1st century AD, making this the largest store of bronze statuary from ancient Italy ever found. It is also set to rethink how we look at Etruscan and Roman history. The find is so pivotal that the Director General of Museums, Massimo Osanna, has compared it to the sensational discovery of the pair of 5th-century BC bronze "Riace" warriors found by a swimmer off the coast of Riace in 1972. I have included a photo of those two perfectly preserved 6ft bronze statues.
The statues also show a combination of written script in both Etruscan and Latin, clearly making this a communal, shared health spa at a time when this should not have been happening. The Etruscans built the first sacred sanctuary at this location in the 3rd century BC, and then the Romans expanded upon it in the 1st century AD. The find yielded a combination of statuettes, heads of statues, and larger iterations.
Since the initial find in 2019, it has been firmly established that this was considered a religious thermal spring strongly linked to curing poor health. Some of the bronzes found were of deities with associations to medicine and health. It has been three years since all items have been fully recovered, studied, analysed, and presented to the world.
