The excavations concentrated on two sectors: the forum area and the suburban area.

In the area south of the forum the 2002 excavation provided a better understanding of the great tufa podium of archaic date, preserved at the southern edge of the excavation to a height of circa 6m.

In 2003 it was discovered that the structure had a square plan (10 × 10m) formed by three opus quadratum walls of granular reddish tufa. The blocks of this dry-stone construction formed a U-shaped structure open towards the north, that is towards the forum. At a later date the internal space was filled with similar tufa blocks. This was a large podium which would have supported a building and rendered the lie of the terrain more regular. Although there was no evidence of the supposed building, due to the overlaying of the remains from later phases (such as those of a late Republican sacellum), it was clear that the archaic podium was probably associated with a religious building.

From a chronological point of view, excavation of the fill on which the tufa blocks of the inner structure rested dated the construction to around the 6th century B.C. Amongst the materials found were bucchero, Attic Black-figure ware and fragments of bucchero with graffiti in the Etruscan alphabet (the first example of the use of writing at Tusculum).

The excavation in the suburban area involved the medieval church built over a late Republican villa. The investigation in the western part of the church uncovered three tombs, two datable to the 11th-12th century and the third dating to sometime after the city’s destruction in 1191. These types of tombs attest the church’s use for funerary purposes after the abandonment of the city.

In the northern sector a portico associated with the church was documented which, in around 1000 A.D., on the occasion of the enlargement of the church, was transformed into the side chapel of the complex. The remains of the bell-tower’s collapse also emerged. It stood by itself to the north of the building and its construction can be dated to between the end of the 11th and beginning of the 12th century.
Amongst the most interesting finds were architectural elements and marble fragments as well as waste from glass production, perhaps to be associated with a craft activity undertaken near the church. (MiBAC)