The Romans were some of the most sophisticated builders of the ancient world. Over the centuries, they adopted an increasingly advanced set of materials and technologies to create their famous structures. New research published in ‘EPJ Plus’ (The European Physical Journal Plus) has found that successive phases of modification to the building saw even more improvements, including higher quality raw materials, higher brick firing temperatures, and better ratios between carbonate and silicate building materials. The optical and electron microscopy techniques employed by the researchers to know more about the Roman building techniques could unlock further mysteries concerning the technologies employed by ancient civilisations.