Beneath Rome's Fiumicino airport lies a "mini-Colosseum" that may have played host to Roman emperors, according to British archaeologists. The foundations of the amphitheater, which are oval-shaped like the much larger arena in the heart of Rome, have been unearthed at the site of Portus, a 2nd century A.D. harbor near Ostia's port on the Tiber River.

A monumental seaport that saved imperial Rome from starvation, Portus is now reduced to a large hexagonal pond on a marshy land owned by a noble family, the Duke Sforza Cesarinis. The two-square-mile site has been known since around the 16th century, but only in the 1860s was it seriously excavated by the Italian archaeologist Rodolfo Lanciani, who marked the remains of what he believed was a theater.

"Our team has rediscovered this structure and proved it was in fact a building more akin to an amphitheater. Lanciani had only found half of the structure, leading him to misinterpret its shape and function," said Simon Keay, project director and leading expert in Roman archaeology at the University of Southampton.

Measuring 138 feet by 125 feet (42 meters by 38 meters), the arena was found inside an imposing imperial-style palace.

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