An archaeological excavation in the Piazza San Giovanni in Laterano, the square in front of the Archbasilica of St John Lateran in Rome, has uncovered complex layers of remains from different periods, including walls dating to between the 9th and 13th centuries A.D., the period in which the basilica and palace complex was known as the Patriarchate.

The Lateran archaeological area extends from just inside the Aurelian Walls near the ancient Porta Asinaria gate to the ground under the cathedral of St. John. The site is of crucial importance to the history of Rome and of Christianity. The sumptuous domus of the Laterani family was built there in the late Republic/early Empire. It was confiscated by Nero after Plautius Lateranus was executed for his role in the Pisonian conspiracy of 65 A.D.

The Lateran Palace had passed through the hands of imperial families and eventually inherited by Fausta, sister of the emperor Maximian. The former Domus Laterani thus became known as the Domus Faustae, and when Fausta was married to Constantine I in 306 A.D., the palace fell under his control. He is said to have given it to the Bishop of Rome around 313 A.D.

On the grounds of the domus a large cavalry barracks was built by Septimius Severus in 193 A.D. The Castra Nova Equitum Singularium was the fort of the Equites Singulares Augusti, the personal cavalry guard of the emperors. The regiment sided with the emperor Maxentius against Constantine at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 A.D., so after Constantine’s victory, he disbanded the Equites singulares Augusti and razed the Castra Nova.

Constantine ordered construction of the first Christian basilica in Rome on the site of the demolished barracks. It was inaugurated in 324 A.D. It became the official seat of the Bishop of Rome, which it still is today, while the neighboring palace became the Pope’s official residence until the papacy was moved to Avignon in 1309.

The original basilica was all but destroyed in an earthquake in 896. The only visible remnant of the original church is the octagonal baptistery which dates to the 5th century. The church was rebuilt in phases. Much of what we see today is the work of baroque architect Borromini in the mid-17th century, and the statue-festooned façade was added in the 18th century.

Despite the great significance of the site, archaeological investigations have been few and far between and most of them precede modern methods. There have been no modern excavations of the square in front of the current basilica until now.

The finds attributable to the Patriarchate were found in the eastern part of the excavation, along its entire length: it is a structure that could have served both as a defensive wall for the papal residence and as a support for the slope that characterized the Lateran area in ancient times. In light of the different building techniques found, its construction can be dated to the 9th century AD and it was the subject of various restoration and reconstruction interventions until at least the 13th century.

The wall is made of large blocks of tuff, certainly reused from other structures that no longer exist. Evidence of one or more restoration interventions is the presence of a banding of the blocks on both sides, made with a facing of tuff blocks that have a series of buttresses. Continuing towards the West, the wall is instead made with wedge-shaped buttresses and a more irregular technique. The final part of the wall, which runs up to the parvis of the Basilica, has a facing of tuff blocks and buttresses this time of a square shape.

Defensive structures would have been very much needed in the period before the Avignon papacy (1309-1376). The noble families of Rome were constantly at war, with the Throne of Peter the main bone of contention, and the city was repeatedly sacked by, among others Arab raiders from Sicily (846) and Normans under Robert Guiscard (1084). The latter looted the city after being called to rescue Pope Gregory VII, holed up in Castel Sant’Angelo under siege by Holy Roman Emperor Henry IV. Guiscard did get Henry to retreat and delivered the pope safely to the Lateran, but Rome paid the price. The ancient city — Capitoline, Palatine, Colosseum — burned for days.

After the return of the popes to Rome, the Lateran was in such poor condition that they set up new digs in the Vatican. The defensive wall was buried and everyone forgot it had ever been there.

The archaeological investigations, although conducted in an emergency due to the timing dictated by the delivery of the works for the opening of the Jubilee year, have also brought to light the remains of other structures, dating back to periods preceding the Patriarchate.

At the centre of the excavation, a portion of a wall in opus reticulatum was identified, dating back to between the 1st century BC and the 1st century AD, whose function was to terrace the slope that characterised the area. More interesting are the imposing foundations in opus reticulatum dating back to the Severian period (3rd century), perhaps to be related to the Castra Nova equitum singularium , already documented under the current structure of the Basilica. Two walls in opus lateralis that run parallel are from the same period and, considering their depth (3.5 metres below the current floor level) and the short distance between them, they are probably part of an underground structure. Finally, in the central portion of the excavation, a section of a wall structure in opus listatum was found, dating back to between the 4th and 7th centuries.

All of the remains are being left where they were found. City authorities are studying how and when to continue the excavations (likely after the Jubilee) and what can be done to make them safe and accessible to visitors.

Archaeologists in Rome have discovered a late Republican-era luxury villa with a spectacular wall mosaic so complex in design and materials that it is unparalleled anywhere in the Roman world. The mosaic dates to the last decades of the 2nd century B.C. and is so exceptional it points to the owner of the villa having been of senatorial rank, confirming ancient sources’ accounts of grand residences belonging to senatorial families on the northwest flank of the Palatine.

The domus was discovered in the course of an archaeological survey of the ancient Vicus Tuscus, a commercial street that linked the river port on the Tiber to the Roman Forum. The street was lined with grain warehouses (horrea) built by Augustus’ right-hand man, Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa, after he was elected aedile (the magistrate in charge of Rome’s buildings) in 33 B.C.

The villa predates Agrippa’s construction of the horrea. It was built in several terraced levels behind the warehouse area between the Forum and the Palatine Hill. There were at least three distinct building phases between the second half of the 2nd century B.C. and the end of the 1st century B.C. The main surviving part of the domus today is the specus aestivus, a banqueting room built in imitation of a cave with water features that kept it cool for feasting in the hot Roman summers. (The Nymphaeum of the Rain created 2,000 years later just up the hill was inspired by these types of rooms.)

It was in this large room that the extraordinary mosaic covering an entire wall was found. Created in the so-called “rustic” style with a variety of materials, including Egyptian blue tiles, glass, flakes of white marble, travertine fragments, coarse pebbles of volcanic pozzolana and sea shells, the wall mosaic depicts a complex layering of figurative scenes in vivid outline. The architectural background consists of four domed shrines defined by pilasters decorated with vases filled with lotus flowers and vine leaves. There are stacks of weapons and carnyces, the fearsome Celtic war trumpets, ships with tridents and the rudders of triremes, all of which may refer to important battle victories on land and sea of the villa’s owner.

A lunette above the architectural setting contains a landscape of a city with a cliff overlooking a sea. Three large ships, one with raised sails, cross the water. Defensive walls with towers and gates surround the city. There’s a large public building within and a pastoral scene on the side. The well-defended coastal city may be another reference to a war fought by the owner of the domus.

The domus and its unprecedented mosaic are very early examples of the kind of luxury that was held in suspicion by Republican traditionalists as imports from the monarchies of the Near East. The conflict between the political factions in the senate went from debates to armed combat, exploding into civil war and the ultimate demise of the Roman Republic in the mid-1st century B.C.

Archaeologists from the Spanish School of History and Archaeology of Rome (EEHAR) have unearthed an exceptional marble statue of a female figure at the ancient city of Tusculum 15 miles outside Rome. The statue is life-sized, and is missing its head and some of its arms, but the flawless white Parian marble and the quality of the carving are extraordinary.

The missing parts makes it difficult to identify, but the upper body is draped in a fawn skin, an attribute of followers of Dionysus. This depiction is typically dated to between the mid-1st century B.C. and the mid-1st century A.D. The statue was carved in the round and fine details of the draping, the wet fabric of the chiton clinging to her skin, the workmanship of the fawn skin are superior, comparable to some of the greatest works of antiquity like the Aphrodite Areia found in Epidaurus and now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.

Tusculum was an ancient Latin city in the Alban Hills. Its legendary history attributes its founding to mythological Greek heroes (Telegonus, son of Odysseus and Circe) or their descendants (Latinus Silvius, the fourth great-grandson of Aeneas), but the earliest archaeological evidence suggests it had an established population by the 8th or 7th century B.C. The monumental city walls date to the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., the same period when Tusculum allied itself with Rome against its neighboring Latin tribes.

That alliance was cemented in 381 B.C. when Tusculum became the first municipium cum suffragio, a self-governing city whose citizens had the right to vote and hold public office in Rome. This category was reserved for cities whose populations at every social stratum (not just the governing elites), had demonstrated a strong desire to integrate with the Roman Republic.

In the late Republic, Tusculum became a fashionable location for country villas. The most prominent and wealthy families in Rome built large homes there to flee the heat of the Eternal City in the summer. The remains of than 130 luxury villas and country estates have been documented even though most of the town has not been excavated. They came to dominate Tusculum so thoroughly that the city itself dimmed in importance and became little more than an adjunct to the summer homes of the wealthy. Cicero had a villa there, as did generations of Cato the Elder’s family and the imperial Flavii family.

The statue dates to the period of Tusculum’s heyday as an enclave of Rome’s elite. It was unearthed in the last excavation campaign (October 2022-July 2023) in an area near the forum where a monumental baths complex was built in the Hadrianic period (117-138 A.D.). It was found face-down on a thin layer of painted stucco that originally adorned the walls of the thermal baths.

It was exhibited in public for the first time on Friday at the Aldobrandini Scuderie in Frascati. The exhibition ends Saturday, but it will undergo conservation in public view at the museum.

More than 50 years after it was closed due to concerns over its structural integrity, the 1st century Tiberian Palace has reopened to visitors. Millions of tourists have looked up from the Roman Forum to admire the dramatic monumental brick arches on several levels on the slope of the Palatine, but they’ve had to be content to observe from afar as the massive structures were in danger of sliding down the hill.

The Domus Tiberiana was the first of the imperial palaces to be planned and constructed as a single comprehensive unit. The palace was built on the northwest corner of the Palatine Hill overlooking the Roman Forum and the Imperial Forum. The imperial residence was only one part of the complex which included gardens, baths, religious sanctuaries, restaurants, service buildings, barracks for the Praetorian Guards and a whole neighborhood of artisans and craftsmen dedicated to the construction and maintenance of the palace.

Although named after the emperor Tiberius (r. 14-37 A.D.), it was built by a later Julian-Claudian emperor. The earliest archaeological evidence suggests it was actually Nero who had it built in the aftermath of the great fire of 64 A.D. at the same time he was building his even more extravagant personal residence, the Domus Aurea. It underwent several phases of expansion and reconstruction, most notably under Domitian (81-96 A.D.) and Hadrian (117-138 A.D.). At its largest extent, it covered an area of four hectares.

After the end of the Western Empire, the palace remained in sporadic use, administered on behalf of the Byzantine emperor. It was still in such good condition that Pope John VII (r. 705-707 A.D.), whose father had been curator of the Palatine for Emperors Constantine IV and Justinian II, had it restored and used it as his residence. By the 10th century, however, the palace was in ruin and was pillaged for its stone, its prized marbles ground up to make lime. In the late 13th century, the ruins were used for burials.

The site was bought by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese in 1550 who filled in the monumental remains and built a splendid pleasure garden, the first private botanical gardens in Europe. He imported rare plants from all over the world and built a wonderland of aviaries, grottos, terraces and staircases rising from what had once been the Forum but for centuries had been grazing pasture for cattle. The cardinal also installed ancient statuary he’d discovered on his properties and acquired from impoverished Roman nobility. The Farnese Gardens became a must-see stop on the Grand Tour.

After the demise of the last Farnese of the male line in 1731, the family fortune was inherited by the Bourbon kings of Naples who helped themselves to all the statuary and let the villa and gardens fall into decay. What was left of the gardens was acquired by the newly-unified Italian state in 1870 and the focus shifted to excavating the ancient structures Cardinal Alessandro Farnese had built his terrestrial paradise on top of.

Excavations in the late 19th century uncovered a loggia composed of two rows of arches more than 50 feet high with a marble parapet and rich remains of frescoes and decorative stuccos on the ceiling of interior rooms. Archaeologists at the time attributed this structure to Caligula based on a comment in Suetonius that Caligula built a bridge between the Palatine and Capitoline, but in fact this loggia dates to the reconstruction of the palace under Domitian.

Since the site was closed in 1970, archaeologists have worked to stabilize and restore the palace. Excavations have revealed a more accurate timeline of the site and multidisciplinary studies have combined information from stratigraphy with the findings of the anthropological, faunal and paleobotanical research to shed new light on centuries of life at the Domus Tiberiana.

The reopened palace is accessed through the ramp of Domitian, the path trod by the emperor and his entourage to reach his private residence. A new permanent exhibition, Imago Imperi, displays artifacts illustrating the history of the palace in 13 rooms that open along the ramp. Statuary (including the looted head of Pan that was recently repatriated), coins, metal, glass, ceramics and more discovered in decades of excavations at the site showcase how the complex was used over the centuries. Among the notable new discoveries are three sanctuaries dedicated to different mystery cults (Dionysus, Isis and Mithras) and a fresco from the Augustan era that is the first known representation of a lemon in Italy.