Summary (English)
In the 1920s excavations undertaken below the church of Villa San Silvestro, a mountain hamlet in the municipality of Cascia, brought to light the podium and other elements of a large Roman temple dating to the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. During the 1980s further excavations were carried out by the Superintendency.
Research in the area restarted in 2006, under the direction of Filippo Coarelli, which revealed that the temple had two building phases. The first phase was its construction at the beginning of the 3rd century B.C., that is soon after the Roman conquest of the Sabina, and the second was a phase of restructuring in monumental form inspired by the architectural models present in Rome in the 1st century B.C.
With the aid of a combined analysis of the magnetometer survey and aerial photographs, the campaign of August 2007 uncovered a section of the forum surrounding the temple, the presence of which had been hypothesised in the previous campaign. Therefore, the temple stood to the back of the forum on the short side of a vast rectangular square of circa 120 × 60 m, surrounded by a portico with tile columns. A quarter of the forum’s surface area was uncovered, including a series of rooms which were probably used for commerce, a small apsidal sacellum, related to some type of cult, and a hydraulic structure, perhaps a cistern, which faced towards the exterior of the forum.
The structures which emerged, although still in the study phase, revealed that the forum underwent various building phases, whilst the finds show that the area was in use between the 3rd -1st century B.C. A second century B.C. dedication to the god Terminus was reused in the forum’s western perimeter wall.
East of the forum a vast area emerged, delimited by a triple series of porticoes with brick columns and half-pilasters, with a rectangular structure in the centre, probably a temple with a double cella. Evidence showed that this sector was still used in the Lombard period, as attested by a partial reconstruction of the building and the presence of two tombs.
- Francesca Diosono 
Director
- Filippo Coarelli - Sezione di Studi Comparati sulle Società Antiche, Dipartimento Uomo & Territorio, Università degli Studi di Perugia
Team
- E. Rizzo
- F.R. Plebani
- M. De Minicis
- N. Tiburzi
- T. Cinaglia
Research Body
- Università degli Studi di Perugia, Dipartimento Uomo e Territorio, Sez. Studi comparati sulle Società Antiche
Funding Body
- Associazione culturale Tellus
- Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Perugia
- Regione Umbria, Assessorato alle Politiche ed alle Attività Culturali
Images
- No files have been added yet