ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXPLORATIONS NEAR THE VILLAGE OF GRANICHAK (Sergey Torbatov, Bilyana Ivanova – bil2909@abv.bg) The mansio with its praetorium was situated on the Roman road Ratiaria – Naissus. The explorations continued in the parallel rooms arranged in a line along the northeastern surrounding wall of the architectural complex. Rooms Nos. 16 – 19 were excavated. Each room had an entrance towards the inner yard, while some of them were interconnected with entrances. The walls of the rooms were built of roughly-cut stones bonded with mortar and their floors were plastered with mortar. A line of quadrilateral foundations was explored in front of the southwestern façade of the rooms. The foundations stood at a little bit more than 3 m in front of the rooms and were constructed of roughly-cut stones, boulders and fragmentary building ceramics bonded with mortar. The bases of the columns that supported a portico with a roof covered with tiles stood over the rectangular foundations. A layer of fragmentary roof-tiles was discovered in the area of the portico. Judging from the coins, the construction of the rooms was launched after AD 364 – 367. Fifty-seven coins minted from AD 313 – 315 to AD 408 – 423 were found in the rooms. During the end of the 10th – beginning of the 11th centuries AD, sunken floored houses were constructed inside the rooms whose walls were still partly preserved.