The limited excavations undertaken on the UNICEF property prior to the construction of an underground car park provided evidence for the reconstruction of the occupation phases in this area from the late Republican to the modern period.

The earliest structures consisted of two foundations in cement conglomerate with a polygonal plan (possibly a fountain) datable to the end of the 1st century B.C. – beginning of the 1st century A.D. and were obliterated by later structures. They formed four rooms (A, B, C, D), of which at least three were trapezoidal in shape, built on top of a base wall with a polygonal layout. This complex of rooms, with fragments of plaster and patches of mosaic pavement may be interpreted as a section of the cellae abutting the interior of the Castrum Praetorium’s perimeter wall (in correspondence with the south-west corner), the praetorian’s barracks built by Tiberius in 21-23 A.D. and later incorporated into the Aurelian walls.

The structures delimiting the rooms were all faced in opus vittatum (clearly remade), however the foundations were in terrain containing material datable to between the end of the 1st century B.C. – beginning of the 1st century A.D. The wall closing the rooms towards the east abutted the radial walls and presented a rather more uneven opus vittatum. The entire western part of the rooms was destroyed by interventions undertaken perhaps as early as the late antique period, which to the south lowered the floor level by about one metre.

The abandonment of the structures was marked by a layer of collapse datable to the 4th century A.D.
At the same time, on the exterior, it appears that craft workshops of a very temporary nature were set up.

It was not until the Renaissance that a new function seems to have been attributed to the zone, when a retaining wall was constructed, probably part of the fortifications built in the mid 16th century during the war against Naples. Traces of this wall only exist on historic maps. A rural construction abutted the retaining wall, which was finally obliterated by the deep fill deposit created at the end of the 1800s within which the foundations of the UNICEF buildings were constructed.