In the Alpine valley Etschtal, two major Celtic currency zonescollided: Northern Italian restrikes of the silver drachms fromMassilia (today: Marseille) and the so called Bavarian rainbowcups, ca. 7.5 g heavy gold staters.

According to popular belief, rainbows left a piece of gold -the rainbow cups - behind where they had touched the ground. Goldcoins like this very often surfaced on fields after heavyrainfalls.

Similar circumstances also led to the discovery of threeCeltic rainbow cups in Castello, near Brentonico (Rovereto), backin the year 1827.

The coins were acquired by Giovanni Battista Noriller(1789-1872), an attorney, who described and illustrated them inhis book "I Lavini di Marco" (Rovereto, 1871).

In 1923, the Noriller collection and the Brentonico coinsended up in the collection of famous archaeologist Paolo Orsi andwere then exhibited in the Museum in Rovereto.

The museum sold the coins in the 1920s in order to pay for theheating costs of the museum's office rooms.

15 years ago, two of the Brentonico rainbow cups suddenlyappeared on the Veronese coin market.

Unlike other Celtic gold coins, whose origin can withcertainty be traced to Greek coins, the imagery on the rainbowcups from Southern Germany established a completely autonomoussymbolic language. That is why scholars in the 17th centurybelieved the coins had literally fallen from the sky or sprungfrom the earth.

This unfamiliar, abstract and often purely ornamental imagerywas often considered primitive and barbaric up until the 19thcentury. Today, in a time where we are used to the style ofartists like Klee, Picasso or Mirò, we can appreciate theimaginative design of some Celtic coins.

All three gold coins from Brentonico, which with regard totheir weight (6.77 g to 7.82 g) nominally correspond roughly toGreek staters, depict a convex bird head with a curved beak. Twoof them further show a torc and six balls inside it on theconcave side. These coins also feature a ball above and below thebeak. The balls possibly indicate the coin's value in analogy tothe Republican Roman As, a bronze coin with a ship bow.

The depicted torc is a metal ring which was worn by Celtic, ormore precisely by Gaulish, warriors as necklace and statussymbol.

To read the complete article, see: Rediscovery of Celtic gold in Brentonico(www.coinsweekly.com/en/Rediscovery-of-Celtic-gold-in-Brentonico/8?&id=389&type=a)