Gold, lucky charms or rusty nails? On the hunt with Italy’s detectorists

A veteran hobbyist explains the allure of searching for treasure in a huge pine forest in the province of Viterbo

Leonardo Ciocca was a novice detectorist when he thought he’d made the discovery of the century.

He had been searching for treasures beneath the earth in a patch of Umbrian countryside when his metal detector began to emit a series of high-pitch beeps. The machine indicated the presence of a deeply buried “precious” metal.