The remains of a Roman house were discovered during the work of constructionof the new wing of the Ospedale Bernardini at the end of the 1970s. The building was investigated again between 1980 and 1999, and revealed three rooms arranged around a peristyle and a large cistern. A stairway with steps of tufo suggests the presence of a second floor. The portico around the peristyle contained columns in bricks and walls in opus reticulatum. The largest room was paved with a rich polychrome mosaic datable to the second quarter of the 1st century BC., as confirmed also by the black glaze pottery (end of the 2nd-beginning of the 1st century BC) discovered in the layers beneath the mosaic. The decorative scheme of the mosaic included a border consisting of a line of triangles; the internal space was occupied by a hexagon defined by bands and filled with elongated scales, divided by six contrasting colors; in the resulting spaces at the four corners are figures of marine creatures, two griffins and two dragons. It has been suggested that this mosaic was created by Hellenistic workmen, perhaps Alexandrian.