The area at East of the Juno Sospita Sanctuary in Lanuvio was known in the local cartographic documents as Frediani Dionigi olive grove, because it was property of this family up to 1939. The area has been indagated with some excavation campaigns carried out between September 2006 an September 2010 and it has never been excavated before.

Excavation campaigns brought to light a massive supporting wall in opus incertum, which runs straight to North for about 48 metres, and a cement terrace 6,30 metres wide and about 60 metres long.

The massive supporting wall in opus incertum, built with small/medium size tuff polygonal pieces, is leaned against the hill and belongs to one of the first building stages of the Sanctuary’s area. It is possible to suggest a dating beetween the end of the II century B.C. and the biginning of the I century B.C.

A series of small arches should begin transversally from this wall, set apart at distances of about 5,20 metres each other. The arches probably made up a small inside corridor between the opus incertum wall and a following parallel wall in opus reticulatum, which is about 60 cm distant from the wall in opus incertum.

The narrow passage between the two wall has been completely empted for almost all hits length and the dig uncovered a cocciopesto floor with a frame, clarifying the hydraulic function of this corridor. This element and the relations between the different building stages of this section were not clear before.

The dig of the corridor’s filling brought to the discovery of a precious marble head of young male, probably belonging to the period of the Giulio-Claudian family, a late imperial coin and many amphora’s fragments belonging to the first imperial age.

The wall in opus reticulatum had three openings that gave access to the upper terrace. A dig behind the central terrace gave an interesting discovery: the opening later curtained off, in ancient times provided access to stairs with peperino steps, which allowed to go up to the upper terrace of the Sanctuary.

Here the archaological surveys carried out in September and October 2009 uncovered a series of square tuff blocks that made up a structure whose purpose is unclear, but they belonged to the Medium Repubblican Age.
In a second phase the entrance was closed by a wall in opus reticulatum, creating new stairs in place of the previous ones; these second stairs were shorter than the first ones and were available only from the top area, going down up to a kind of landing, where there is a small balcony leaned against the inside wall.

The cement plane area shows different phases with a series of pavements in opus coementicium with earthenware basis, mixted basis, mosaics and a plane with many remakes and different uses of architectonical pieces, from the I century B.C.to the IV century A.D.

In the plane area, in particular, four rooms have been indentified, with different floors at the same altitude, preserved only in the upstream section. The first space is surrounded on three sides by opus reticulatum walls and covered by a cocciopesto floor rich in ceramic dots.

In the second space are only preserved pavement’s pieces in opus coementicium with earthenware basis (cocciopesto) and the related preparation, made by grey mortar and brick and ceramic fragments. Walls are not preserved, except their print on the ground.

The third wall is better preserved than the other ones because it shows the Eastern and Western walls, made with tuff blocks covered inside by cocciopesto, and floor remains, originally made with a series of lunensis marble tiles probably with different shapes. Some fragments are preserved and it is possible to reconstruct the esagonal shape of one of the tiles. The last space is paved with a black tiles mosaic and is delimited by walls which are partially preserved.

The four rooms, in spite of small differences in building techniques and pavements’ altitudes, have the same orientation of the western walls and the same distance from the opus reticulatum wall behind them. This could allow to think about rooms built in the same period and maybe with the same purpose of use.

In the South-West section of the plane area a black tiles mosaic was uncovered. On the mosaic’s surface (except a strip in each side) was built an enclosure or a square balcony made with friable mortar and stones (also reused cubilia ). Near the mosaic, 4,5 metres over its altitude, there is a cement plane, which looks quite recent considering that the western edge is made with tuff irregular blocks and architectonical pieces reused. There are also a doric semi-capital in peperino stone and a little denticulated marble frame, placed upside down.