Italy has identified the remains of a Roman public building in the city of Fano that closely match the only known written description of a basilica attributed to Vitruvius, the ancient architect whose ideas shaped Western architecture. The structure, buried beneath the later layers of the city, dates back more than 2,000 years and appears to match the dimensions, layout, and proportions recorded in his writings. Archaeologists say the discovery offers rare physical proof of theories that survived mostly on paper for centuries. Officials describe the site as unusually precise in its correspondence with classical texts, a quality seldom seen in Roman archaeology. Further excavation will determine the extent of the find's preservation and the possibility of public access.
