McDonald’s has opened its first ever restaurant-museum hybrid thanks to the discovery of an ancient road buried for centuries and unearthed when construction on the site started in 2014.

In addition to the McDonald’s restaurant in Frattocchie, just outside of Rome, €300,000 (US$318,000, £253,000) was spent on restoring the street, which visitors can enjoy while tucking into their Big Mac thanks to a transparent floor installed within the restaurant.

Buried for more than 1,700 years, Rome’s Superintendency for Archaeology, Fine Arts and Landscape managed the project, with McDonald’s financing the restoration. In addition to discovering the road, three adult male skeletons were discovered, buried hundreds of years ago after the road had fallen out of use.

Measuring around 45m (147ft) in length, the road was built at some point between the second and first century BC and is linked to the Appian way – an ancient road linking Rome to the south of Italy.

The museum/restaurant comes with signs in English and Italian, explaining the history of the road and how it was discovered. It is accessible via the McDonald’s car park and visitors do not have to pay to explore the site.

“This is our first museum-restaurant,” said Mario Federico, head of McDonald’s Italia.

“We’ve been able to return a stretch of Roman road to the local community and to the whole of Italy. The project is a good example of how the public and private sectors can collaborate effectively on reclaiming cultural heritage.”

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