This season’s research, part of the ‘Progetto Egnazia: dallo scavo alla valorizzazione’, exposed more of the buildings preexisting the baths built in the Augustan period on the south side of the forum. In particular, a room with structures for the treatment of textiles was excavated. This was probably a fullonica in use throughout the 1st century B.C. It was restructured, although its function remained unchanged, probably at the time of the construction of the balneum. The baths’ vestibule was situated to the side of this workshop, attesting the fact that the baths were built in an urban area that was already densely occupied, as part of the incisive urban planning intervention in the Augustan period, which organized the forum’s monumental nucleus.

The building next to the baths on the opposite side of the road was more clearly exposed. From the early imperial period, it was divided into a series of rooms arranged around a peristyle with an extensive water supply system. During the life of the balneum, until the end of the 4th century A.D., the fullonica formed a unitary complex with the baths and was also touched by the restructuring carried out on the baths, especially in the 2nd century, in correspondence with work on the via Traiana, and again in the 3rd century.

A building, hitherto unknown, was also discovered on the south side of the forum, but further east with respect to the baths. Architecturally of very high standard, the evidence to date suggests it was in use during the late Republican and early imperial periods, and did not seem affected by the changes in function involving many sectors of the town from the end of the 4th century. It was characterised by a large central area closed by a rectangular exedra and surrounded by modular rooms in a symmetrical arrangement. So far, the plan suggests this structure was directly linked to the forum’s commercial activities. One of the rooms was on a higher level, accessible via a ramp and was used for the storage of wine amphorae.

Importance evidence for the imperial period was uncovered in the acropolis sanctuary that had been in use since the 6th century B.C. In this period, a four-sided porticoed enclosure, with a large quadrangular exedra at the centre of each of the long sides, was built around the temple. The open areas between the temple and the porticoes had beaten earth floors in this phase, which the pottery and coin finds date to the first half of the 2nd century A.D. Therefore, this religious complex was among the sectors of the town redeveloped as part of the extensive building intervention in the Trajanic period, involving the baths, the porticoed market square, and the residential sector opposite the square south of the via Traiana.

From the mid 4th century A.D., at the time when the sacred area went out of use, quadrangular rooms used for residential and productive purposes were built abutting the sanctuary’s closing walls. The open area gradually lost its original function and it was used burials, found abutting the podium’s lower cornice.

Around the mid 6th century A.D., when the acropolis was fortified, the Byzantine curtain walls and the castrum were constructed making ample use of materials taken from the dismantled sanctuary. The latest excavations identified the innermost tower of the castrum on the acropolis. Quadrangular in plan it was partially scarped in order to provide better defence, and incorporated the south-western corner of the imperial portico.