What's in Your Basement?

via HurriyetDailyNews.com

First of all, I wish I HAD a basement. Here in the south, we're on a crawlspace because the frostline isn't very deep. (I really miss the storage space.)

My old house had one. It was an 1875 Victorian gothic farmhouse and while we were restoring it, I was always on the lookout for neat old stuff left behind by previous owners. All I found was a small silver letter opener and a couple of rusty nails.

In Turkey, a basement can hide more interesting things....like wellheads attached to a network of secret underground cisterns, teaming with carp. Not unusual for Istanbul, but even cisterns don't take the top spot of amazing basement artifacts.

I was reading my Hurriyet Daily News the other day and I came across this:

"The Roman-era city of Germenicia was unearthed by chance during an illegal excavation in the basement of a house."

Double-take!!!

OK. So what they really mean is someone noticed mosaics in their basement and they wanted to see what the rest of the pretty pictures looked like. A few eminent domain rulings later, and Turkey has another historic site to visit.

Related Articles

Mosaics found in SE Turkey lead to unearthing of ancient Roman city (hurriyetdailynews.com)
Germanicia Found? (rogueclassicism.com)