Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Archaeologists excavating an area surrounding a mall in Split, Croatia, stumbled upon the remains of what was once a luxurious Roman country estate.
• Based on the discovery of an olive oil press and other structures, it’s now thought that this estate supplied the neighboring city of Salona with oil.
• Also discovered in this ancient villa rustica were mosaics, coins from different time periods, glass vessels, and ceramics.

Just outside Split, Croatia, the ancient world merges with the modern one. Ruins peer out from residential areas. Marble columns stand on tree-lined paths. Sarcophagi, carved with winged griffins and nameless deities, rest in a necropolis. And across from the Bauhaus shopping center, what was once a sprawling Roman complex has been unearthed.

Excavations at the Mostine archaeological site have revealed a 6,500-foot estate whose weathered stone walls still stand almost five feet high. Archaeologist Eduard Visković and his team from the Kantharos group were initially conducting a routine check for ruins before further development of the commercial zone, continuing work that had started in 2011 with the discovery of graves and the remains of a church. The archaeologists think the complex could date back as far as the first century C.E., but they also found artifacts from later time periods that showed it had been used consistently throughout the following centuries.

“We can say that there is no such spacious economic-residential complex in the area that testifies to the lively agricultural activity in the Salona area,” Visković said in a recent press release.

What started with the uncovering of a doorway led to six spacious rooms (as large as 984 square feet); an entire network of walls, broken columns, channels, and production areas carved from stone; and plaster and ceramic fragments of amphorae and other vessels. There was also a cistern used for storage. But Visković finally realized this must have been a Roman agricultural facility after he he found a torcular (meant for pressing olive oil) and a channel through which the oil would trickle into small basins. This wasn’t a surprise, considering the site’s location right outside of the ancient city of Salona (now Solin).

Originating as an Illyrian settlement in the third century B.C.E., Salona was conquered in 78 B.C.E. by the Romans, who transformed it into a colony and made it the capital of the province of Dalmatia. By the third century C.E., Salona had become one of the largest cities in the Roman Empire, and was the birthplace of the exalted Roman emperor Diocletian. Emperors from Augustus to Diocletian strategically took advantage of the city’s administrative and military power. Many monumental structures of this urban hub—from baths known as thermae to estates, roads, walls, cisterns, a theater, and an impressive amphitheater—have survived, along with mosaics in characteristically Greek and Roman motifs. What the Kantharos team found was most likely a luxury country estate that supplied Salona with olive oil.

“It is quite clear that the building is a large economic facility in which agricultural products from the vast Salona [complex] were processed,” Visković said. “In addition, it is obvious that there was also a residential part, for example a villa rustica of a wealthy lord and owner of the complex, which is clear from the findings of tesserae (cubes) of a multi-colored mosaic, there are even glass parts, then coins from the 2^nd to 6^th centuries, glass vessels, kitchen ceramics.”

Salona apparently received an influx of wealth from the olive oil industry. Estates like this one may have not had the might of political administrations or the military, but they were still vital parts of the cities they supported. The archaeological team plans to continue excavating and documenting finds for several more weeks before covering larger remains—which cannot be taken to the nearby Split Archeological Museum—with geotextile and gravel to protect the structures and stabilize the land they stand on. Mostine had seen continuous flooding during excavations, and needed to be drained and dug out.

Even the oldest museum in Croatia cannot hold all the artifacts that have surfaced in Split and nearby areas. Surrounded by Greek and Roman headstones, Split’s museum has elaborate Roman columns standing between its foundations and yards full of stone carvings, including Sphinxes that Emperor Diocletian supposedly had imported from Egypt. Its atrium holds busts of Emperors and their high advisers.

Croatia continues to live in both the present and the past, with every step going both backwards and forwards in time.