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London's largest ancient Roman fresco is “most difficult jigsaw puzzle”

Scattered in pieces, the city's largest area of painted Roman plaster was found amid the rubble, dating back at least 1,800 years.

This year, a team of researchers from the Museum of London Archaeology(MOLA) has been hard at work in a development site known as The Liberty, which has already revealed ancient mosaics and a mausoleum. This era of Roman painting commonly incorporated color panels with border motifs and elements that imitated stone slabs like porphyry without the expense or labor involved in hauling that much material. Wall plaster reconstruction illustration by Faith VardyOne special detail comes in the form of what’s known as a tabula ansata, a carving of a decorative tablet that Roman artists used to sign their work.

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