The building in corso Venezia 37, behind the Swiss College – the present State Archive – can be considered part of the complex of buildings constructed towards the end of 1700, in the Borgo of the East Gate, the quarter situated between the circle of the Spanish walls and the bastions of the East Gate.

An archaeological investigation examined one zone in particular, known above all for finds of a funerary character. This was situated in the north-eastern sector of the town outside the Maximian extension of the walls and not far from one of the main urban cemetery areas, the cremation necropolis in the Public Gardens. The road leading out of the town towards the north-east must have exercised a strong attraction in terms of self-celebration. As well as the tombs found between the end of the 1800s-beginning of the 1900s at corso Venezia 16, dating to the late antique period, in 1999 an intervention in the courtyard of the State Archive revealed an inhumation cemetery extending north-west of the corso, which the finds date to between the 1st and 4th century A.D.

The finds taken into consideration here, relating to the nucleus of cremation burials, fall within this context, adding to knowledge of the development and distribution of the town’s cemetery areas. The material re-proposes associations that are already known, confirming the ritual presence of coarse ware olpi, lamps of the firmalampen type and small glass balsamaria. In this composition the so-called “minimal” tomb groups of the burials can be placed approximately between the end of the 1st century and the first half of the 2nd century A.D.

The preliminary analysis of the excavation data suggests the existence of seven chronological phases, from the first traces relating to use of the area through to recent work undertaken on the present building.