This was the University of Salento’s ninth excavation season in the urban area of Aquinum, in the locality of S. Pietro Vetere, in the territory of Castrocielo (FR).
During this campaign, it was decided to enlarge the excavations to cover an overall area of about one hectare and continue the excavation of the rooms already identified. The latter are situated in the central block of the building with the heated rooms of the men’s sector to the west and the women’s to the east.

Work also took place in the women’s sector of the bath building in order to complete the excavation and recording along the side facing onto the basalt-paved road, the so called via delle Terme. Here, excavation continued inside a room interpreted as a latrina, whose white mosaic floor had been partially uncovered in the room’s western part during the 2010 season.

The palestra and a series of rooms connecting to it, arranged along the entire west side, were identified in the southern sector of the bath complex. Here, it was decided to concentrate on the central-eastern part of the large space in order to complete its excavation and see whether there were any service rooms mirroring those found on the west side. The excavations identified the eastern edge of the room, so that the complete perimeter of the palestra, and a new entrance situated in the south-eastern corner were exposed.

The discovery of a robber trench along the western edge made it possible to reconstruct the line of a portico in this sector, whose back wall at least must have been richly decorated with plaster, as indicated by the substantial amount present in a layer close to the robber trench. Below the surface layers in the open-air central sector, there were a series of accumulations of circular-shaped building materials with clear traces of contact with fire. They may be associated with the extemporaneous reworking of building materials, in the phase of abandonment and robbing of the entire bath complex. The removal of the latest stratigraphy also exposed a third pool (5 m2) in the north-eastern part of the palestra approximately on the same axis as the one opposite it on the west side.