Archaeologists Discover Mysteriously Marked Ancient Artifacts Under Notre Dame Cathedral in 'Dig of the Century'
Bits of the history of Paris are emerging from the ground beneath Notre Dame cathedral, along with pieces of a medieval mystery.
The project began when Notre Dame was struck by fire in 2019, and French media are calling it the “dig of the century.”
“It’s a rare opportunity for us to work on something that’s tangibly going to make a difference to the history of Paris,” Lucie Altenburg, a conservator with the Paris archaeology unit, said, per the Associated Press.
A 1,700-year-old Roman coin stamped with the face of Emperor Constantine has been found, as have fragments of medieval pottery with marks no one has yet interpreted.
“It makes Notre Dame feel alive again,” Emily Carter, 34, a tourist from Manchester, said. “You come to see the cathedral, then realize there’s another city under your feet. That’s almost more moving.”
The dig has gone down about 13 feet. It reached cellars of the houses that surrounded the cathedral when it was built in 1163, and further down into the past.
“Here you can see the layers — medieval Paris, Roman Paris, maybe even before that,” Yasmine Benali, 22, an archaeology student, said.
“It makes the city feel less like a postcard and more like something still being discovered.”
Medieval latrines, which doubled as garbage dumps, have yielded broken pottery as well as whole items.
It is “rare to find complete ceramics,” Valentine Breloux, an archaeologist with the unit, said.
‘Dig of the century’ beneath Notre Dame reveals mysterious markings, ancient secrets https://t.co/MPCQB9YSaw #FoxNews
— 815wrldtrvlr (@815wrldtrvlr) June 19, 2026
Multiple bits of pottery have the same faint reddish writing painted on the inside, but no one knows what the markings mean.
Breloux called the mysterious shards “astonishing.”
Objects such as the Roman coin “can be invaluable in giving us the date of the (underground) layer,” Altenburg said.
“The hope is that we are able to go back in time even further than we’ve ever been before,” Altenburg said, according to Fox News.
Hugo Cador, an archaeologist and manager of the excavation site, said items being found have a value far beyond the materials that went into making them.
“They aren’t treasures, like gold ingots, but each item has great scientific value,” Cador said, according to Discover.
“When we come across complete objects, like this medieval pitcher or this candlestick unearthed from the old latrines that were then used as a dump. This type of artifact allows us to reconstruct daily life at the time and to characterize the different uses of the place: elite residences, simple houses, places of worship, shops,” Cador added.
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