THE STORY OF LUCIANO FAGGIANO AND HIS TRATTORIA TOLD BY THE NEW YORK TIMES

As told by the New York Times, the amazing story of Luciano Faggiano is now known worldwide: indeed, what happened to the Italian who lives in Lecce, Apulia, is just incredible. As he always wanted to open a trattoria and he actually did. However, something happened one day, when he had an issue to fix the toilet and enlisted his two older sons to help him dig a trench and investigate.

He predicted the job would take about a week.

As his search for a sewage pipe in 2000 became a family’s thing, one day he found a subterranean world tracing back before the birth of Jesus: a Messapian tomb, a Roman granary, a Franciscan chapel and even etchings from the Knights Templar. This is how what he started as a trattoria became a museum, where relics still turn up today.

The New York Times says: “As father and sons discovered a false floor that led down to another floor of medieval stone, which led to a tomb of the Messapians, who lived in the region centuries before the birth of Jesus. Soon, the family discovered a chamber used to store grain by the ancient Romans, and the basement of a Franciscan convent where nuns had once prepared the bodies of the dead.”

http://www.italoamericano.org/story/2015-4-15/Luciano-Faggiano