Frederic Auth

Because Frankfurt is, I think, the second...

most expensive town in Germany to live in.

And each time one of those buildings is being torn down, well, the archaeologists get the chance to look under it.

And in this case, we were particularly lucky that those buildings sometimes do not have a basement, so there's still a lot intact to research on.

Right, just out of interest, if a building's taken down, do archaeologists always get a first chance to explore before you build on it?

Is that sort of a default in Frankfurt because of NIDA?

Yeah, well, essentially, yes, yeah.

Okay, so this building that was demolished revealed something really unusual, a sanctuary.

And there's some very interesting distinguishing parts about this find.

So once the building's gone, what do you do and what did you find in this particular site?

So in this case was a large school building being demolished.

So fairly large site, we're talking four and a half thousand square meters here.

Wow.

And, yeah, when the building was turned down, it was pretty clear that there was something under there because we are in the center of the Roman nida.

So, it's fairly obvious that we have to expect some archaeology there.

And you would normally find, like, the center of administration there, sort of administration buildings?

Is that what you would normally expect to find there?

Pretty much, yes.

Maybe not an administrative building, but what we call the Forum.

So a bit like the Forum Romanum in Rome itself, which is also the city center of Rome.