LONDON.- An early 17th-century gilded mask of a river god is on display for the first time after being unearthed two years ago at Somerset House, the site of the royal palace where Elizabeth I lived before she became Queen. The river god, whose shell-shaped chin reflects the period’s fascination for mythological creatures, is among architectural fragments whose discovery offers a tantalizing glimpse of a spectacular royal residence that was adorned with gilt moldings, oak floors and stuccoed ceilings. Painted stucco ornaments decorated with leaf patterns, as well as carved masonry and ceramic tiles, were excavated by archaeologists when a fountain was being constructed in the courtyard of Somerset House.

The finds have overturned the assumption that nothing remained of a palace that had been one of the most influential buildings of the English Renaissance until its destruction in the 18th century. It was home to successive queens, including Charles I’s Henrietta Maria and Charles II’s Catherine of Braganza. When the present Somerset House was built in the 1770s as an enormous government office block, the original palace had been completely flattened and it was thought that nothing survived under the courtyard.