Twenty English coins found near the Vatican offer a glimpse of how a community far from home paid its bills a millennium ago.

Research announced by Cambridge on October 1 identifies 19 pennies and a halfpenny from tenth-century England at Rome’s Palazzo della Rovere. The finds illuminate the Schola Saxonum, the city’s Anglo-Saxon quarter.

The coins now add a monetary dimension. Historians Rory Naismith and Francesca Tinti interpret their scattered distribution, alongside craft debris, as evidence of transactions. The excavation yielded no evidence that silver was being melted down to make local money.

A papal coin suggests English and local currency circulated together. That challenges assumptions about restrictions on foreign money in Rome and raises the possibility of special treatment for English visitors.

The setting already had a spectacular ancient story. In July 2023, Rome’s archaeological authority described remains it identified as Nero’s theater beneath the palace. But its original excavation report also highlighted medieval manufacturing activity from the tenth century, provisionally connecting it with the English community because of its date and location.

That earlier report gives the discovery a longer backdrop. Institutions representing northern European Christian communities grew around St. Peter’s to receive pilgrims visiting the apostle’s tomb. The excavated neighborhood subsequently kept making things through major changes in ownership and use, including its association with the Santo Spirito in Sassia hospital.

Among the later medieval evidence were large quantities of worked bone, unfinished pieces and rosary-making materials. Rebuilt roads connected the area with a Tiber landing called Portus Maior. Pilgrim badges depicting the Holy Face of Lucca and the Virgin of Rocamadour turned up in abandoned road layers. These finds span different centuries; they are not all belongings of the tenth-century English residents.

The proposed privilege remains an interpretation. The find does not establish who granted it or exactly how the arrangement worked.