Between 2004 and 2006 the documentation and excavation was undertaken of the eastern mansio of the Piccolo San Bernardo. This vast complex had an extension of circa 70 m long and 19 m wide and was delimited by a 20th century enclosure wall. Its plan developed in small rooms arranged along the sides of two large rectangular courtyards.

Furthermore, outside the southern corner near the modern road, a part of the building, interpreted as a fanum, a Gallo-Roman temple, was preserved. Two substantial restoration interventions, undertaken between 1912 and 1940, were identified on the standing walls. Although they were on the whole consolidated, in some sectors of the building the base of the original foundations was preserved. Trenches revealed the foundations that had not been subjected to restoration, whose presence modifies the plan which until today had been considered definitive. The new finds make it necessary to reconsider the development of the mansio ’s original plan and the continuation of the research seems indispensable for gathering further data in order to give a correct interpretation of the site. Unfortunately, also in the western sector of the complex there were no surviving floors dating from the antique phases and the stratigraphy had been disturbed by a series of levellings. A trench dug in the area used for dumping material which came out of the excavations undertaken at the end of the 19th century and early 20th century, produced numerous fragments of pottery and some coins. Their study will be decisive, especially considering the lack of original stratigraphy, in the reconstructing the chronological context of antique occupation in the eastern mansio. (Patrizia Framarin, Monica Girardi)