A US couple from New Orleans made a remarkable discovery while clearing their backyard — an ancient Roman tombstone believed to be nearly 1,900 years old. The finding has triggered an international investigation into how the relic ended up in Louisiana and efforts to return it to its home country, Italy.
Tulane University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband, Aaron Lorenz, unearthed the flat marble slab earlier this year. The discovery was first reported by the Preservation Resource Center (PRC) of New Orleans, a nonprofit dedicated to preserving the city’s historic heritage.
A message in Latin
According to the PRC, the couple found the stone in March and noticed it bore an inscription in Latin, the language of ancient Rome. Intrigued, Santoro contacted archaeologist D. Ryan Gray at the University of New Orleans and her Tulane colleague, classical studies professor Susann Lusnia, for help identifying the artifact.
Gray shared photographs of the slab with Harald Stadler, a professor at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, who passed them along to his brother, a Latin instructor. Both Lusnia and Stadler reached the same conclusion independently: the stone was a grave marker dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, a Roman sailor and soldier who lived during the second century.
🔴BREAKING: Couple in U.S. Unearth Roman Tombstone in Their Garden
In New Orleans, a couple cleaning their yard uncovered a 1,900-year-old Roman tombstone dedicated to Sextus Congenius Verus, a naval soldier of the Misenum Praetorian Fleet.
Experts traced the Latin inscription,… pic.twitter.com/9HWbTYrY7W— History Content (@HistContent) October 8, 2025
Link to a missing Italian museum artifact
The headstone also matched the description of one reported missing from the city museum of Civitavecchia, Italy, located northwest of Rome. Gray wrote in a column for the PRC that the museum had originally housed the tombstone near the site where it was discovered.
After confirming its likely origin, Lusnia contacted the Civitavecchia museum, and Santoro and her collaborators turned the artifact over to the FBI’s art crime team to begin the process of repatriation. Santoro’s group — which she jokingly called “team tombstone” — then began trying to piece together how the relic had traveled nearly 5,000 miles to New Orleans.
Tracing the stone’s mysterious journey
Their research suggests the tombstone was likely brought to the United States sometime in the 20th century, possibly after World War II, when American and Allied troops were stationed in Italy. But who brought it remains unknown.
Records show that Santoro and Lorenz’s home once belonged to Frank and Selma Simon, longtime New Orleans residents who owned the property for much of the 1900s. Frank Simon, who managed a wholesale shoe business, died in 1945. His daughters, four saleswomen and one seamstress, kept the house until 1991. Santoro and Lorenz bought it in 2018.
An American couple found an ancient Roman tombstone in their backyard. It disappeared from a museum in Italy, probably after World War II, according to The Guardian.
Tuley University anthropologist Daniella Santoro and her husband Aaron Lorenz discovered the marble slab in March… pic.twitter.com/wQfY3Qta4j
— catdorina (@catdorina) October 8, 2025
Santoro’s team briefly considered that a Navy veteran who once lived next door might have brought the stone home from Europe, but that theory was dismissed after the National World War II Museum confirmed he had served only in the Pacific theater.
Lost in the chaos of war
Lusnia later visited the Civitavecchia museum and found that it had been nearly destroyed in Allied bombings between 1943 and 1944. The museum, which reopened in 1970, lost much of its collection during the attacks. A 1954 inventory listing the tombstone was based on older records, suggesting the artifact was likely lost in the chaos of war.
Gray noted that it’s also possible the stone passed through an antique dealer and was sold to a tourist after the war — a time when such trades went largely unregulated.
“Perhaps a family member or someone cleaning out the house after a sale saw it just as a convenient paving stone for a muddy yard,” he wrote. “Right now, it is impossible to say, though we’ll continue to look for new possibilities.”
A remarkable case of rediscovery
Museum staff in Civitavecchia are preparing to celebrate once the artifact is returned and placed back on display. Gray said the discovery shows how a homeowner’s curiosity can bring to light something both unexpected and historically significant.
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