Archaeological workers are digging 4 meters (13 feet) underground at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris to uncover Roman Paris 2,000 years ago. They are finding coins, pottery, and other artifacts that shed light on the city's history.
30 years later, 5-month-old Gabrielle Hanshaw’s killer will be executed. We look back at the chilling Jacksonville case Review: Might be better to stay at home for comedian Nate Bargatze’s turn as stay-at-home dad in ‘The Breadwinner’Archaeological workers wearing hard hats dig 4 meters (13 feet) underground during excavations outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026.
(AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga) Camille Colonna, archaeologist in charge of operations, wearing a safety helmet, poses in front of Notre-Dame Cathedral during excavations in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga) Archaeologist Lucie Altenburg examines a coin under a microscope after it was discovered during excavations outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga) A fragment bearing an inscription is photographed among artifacts discovered during excavations outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026.
(AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga) Archaeologist Valentine Breloux, holds ceramic fragments discovered during excavations outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)Archaeological workers wearing hard hats dig 4 meters (13 feet) underground during excavations outside Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, Monday, June 1, 2026. (AP Photo/Nicolas Garriga)Four meters (13 feet) beneath them, a team of archaeologists is digging the other way — straight down and back in time, to Roman Paris 2,000 years ago.
But in a city this old, the soil cannot be turned until what lies beneath it is excavated, in case it is damaged during works. So a slice of Notre Dame’s forecourt has become an excavation site — an open pit ringed by barriers and crossed by a wooden walkway, a few steps from the line-up.
‘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, told The Associated Press. Among the hundreds of objects already found: a 4th-century coin stamped with the face of the Emperor Constantine, and shards of medieval pottery painted on the inside with marks no expert has yet deciphered — like a modern Da Vinci Code.
‘It makes Notre Dame feel alive again,’ said Emily Carter, 34, a tourist from Manchester waiting in line with her two children. ‘You come to see the cathedral, then realize there’s another city under your feet. That’s almost more moving. ’ The first traces appear 50 centimeters (20 inches) down; 4 meters (13 feet) lower, the team is still pulling up the past.
Some days they fill 15 crates — from ground that has lain untouched for decades. This is the bargain in every old city: the past is not in a museum down the street — it is under the street. Cities rise. Each age builds on the rubble of the last, and the ground climbs with it; in Rome, it has risen about 9 meters (30 feet) since the empire fell in the 5th century AD.
When Athens built its metro for the 2004 Olympics, it set off the largest excavation in Greek history and turned up tens of thousands of objects, now shown in the stations themselves. Paris is no different. Centuries later, Notre Dame rose on the same ground. At the cathedral’s birth in 1163, the entire square was packed with medieval houses, split by a single street, said Camille Colonna, the archaeologist leading the dig.
Digging down, her team has reached their cellars — and therefore also the time in history they represent. Below them lie Merovingian and Carolingian grain pits, from the sixth to the tenth centuries; below those, darker and deeper still, a dense Roman quarter from the fourth and fifth centuries. Twenty centuries are stacked in 4 meters of earth — or about the height of two-and-a-half Napoleon Bonapartes standing on top of one another.
‘Here you can see the layers — medieval Paris, Roman Paris, maybe even before that,’ said Yasmine Benali, 22, an archaeology student watching from behind the barriers. ‘It makes the city feel less like a postcard and more like something still being discovered. ’ The richest finds here come from the foulest place: the deep pits beneath the medieval houses, old latrines that doubled as rubbish dumps.
Out of them the team keeps lifting whole jugs and cups — thrown away centuries ago, yet still intact — among the broken plates and animal bones. Here the soft waste cushioned them, and centuries later they miraculously came up whole.
Then some other objects came that confounded experts. As conservators cleaned what looked like ordinary medieval pottery, they found faint reddish writing painted on the inside — the same mysterious markings on shard after shard. The coins came up as black discs, eaten by rust. But under an X-ray, a face returned: it was Constantine, the Roman emperor who ruled in the early 300s AD.
Such objects also ‘can be invaluable in giving us the date of the (underground) layer,’ Altenburg said
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