Skeleton found during Piazza Pia roadworks.

A human skeleton was unearthed at a construction site near the Vatican in Rome where works are underway to build an underpass ahead of the Jubilee Year 2025.

The macabre discovery was made on Friday morning at the Piazza Pia work site between Castel S. Angelo and Via della Conciliazione, the street leading to St Peter's Square.

The skeleton was removed by authorities, according to Italian media reports, and works on the underpass will continue as scheduled.

Work continues on one of Rome’s biggest projects for Jubilee 2025: the new Piazza Pia underpass between Castel Sant’Angelo and Via della Conciliazione, the street leading to St Peter’s, due for completion by this December. pic.twitter.com/rgERWCBcmN

— Wanted in Rome (@wantedinrome) May 1, 2024

The project, scheduled for completion by December, will see traffic channelled underground to meet the existing Lungotevere in Sassia underpass, built as part of the works for Jubilee 2000.

In 2019 three human skeletons - an adult male, an adult female and a child, probably a family - were discovered during works outside the Piramide subway station in Rome.

Archaeologists said that the skeletons, dating to the first century BC, had been buried in the vast Necropolis Ostiense.

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