2000 year-old statues discovered in Italy

In Tuscany, Italy, 24 ancient bronze statues were found by archaeologists. They're Etruscan statues, which are over 2,300 years old. The bronze figures of gods, emperors and children were discovered in mud and water in ancient thermal baths.

The site isn't far from a modern day spa in Siena, which is popular with visitors today. One of the archaeologists Emanuele Mariotti reports on the discovery.

Emanuele Mariotti: "People came to this place to heal themselves two thousand years ago and more. And in this place people dedicated objects, statues, coins, bronzes for their own health and salvation, through water, praying to the gods."

500 years before the Roman Republic was formed, the Etruscans flourished in northern Italy. The discovery of the statues has been an amazing event for the history of the Mediterranean region. Michela Ledda, one of the archaeologists on the site, shares his experience of seeing the statues appear from the mud.

Michela Ledda: "It was a very strong emotion that I tried to share immediately by looking for the eyes of my companions, because you could not believe it. Let's say that at the beginning you could only see one little foot because it was in a position where only one foot of this statue emerged, but then it turned out to be completely intact. The emotion is huge. These are things that happen I think only once in the life of an archaeologist."

As well as statues, thousands of coins were found. It's thought that the Etruscans believed that if they threw coins into the baths they'd have good luck, which many cultures around the world still practise today.

What's amazing about this discovery is that the statues and coins were in the same place they would have stood back then. The Etruscan and Roman baths were shut down during Christian times. Large stone pillars and mud protected the statues. This has kept them in good condition.

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