Roman shipwreck with 500 amphorae discovered off coast of Sicily
A 2,100-year-old Roman shipwreck with 500 amphorae found off Sicily.
A Roman shipwreck dating to between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC has been discovered about three miles off the coast of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily, resting at a depth of 46 metres and carrying roughly 500 amphorae. The discovery came after local fishers alerted Italy’s cultural heritage police, who then surveyed the site.
The cargo’s composition is what makes the wreck particularly valuable to archaeologists. Most of the amphorae are of the Dressel 1A type, a container widely used to transport wine across the Mediterranean between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. Dressel 1A amphorae are a well-known marker of Roman trade expansion during the late Republic, and a find of this size — 500 intact or semi-intact vessels — offers a rare, concentrated snapshot of the scale at which wine was moving by sea.
Italy’s Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli described the discovery as “one of the most important underwater archaeological discoveries of recent years”. The wreck’s location, off the western coast of Sicily, sits along trade routes that connected the Italian peninsula to North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and the relatively shallow depth — 46 metres — makes it accessible for detailed excavation and documentation.
The find also underscores the role that traditional fishing communities can play in maritime archaeology. The site was identified not by a research survey but by fishers who encountered signs of the wreck and reported it, a pattern that has led to several significant discoveries in Italian waters in recent years.
The ship itself is thought to be a merchant vessel typical of the late Republican period, a time when Rome’s demand for wine was driving an increasingly industrialised trade network. The dominance of Dressel 1A amphorae in the cargo points to a vessel likely sailing from the Tyrrhenian coast of Italy — perhaps from Campania or Latium — bound for markets in the western Mediterranean or North Africa. The wreck’s preservation will allow archaeologists to study not only the containers but potentially the hull and any organic remains, offering insights into shipbuilding techniques of the period.