Over 20 students from Genoa University and 25 local school students took part in this season’s excavations and finds study.

Area 7000
The excavations in this area aimed to identify the link between the left aisle of the cathedral and the adjacent octagonal baptistery, originally an independent structure outside the church, and later joined to it. In this area, the Lamboglia-Restagno excavations of 1956-58 had uncovered traces of a burial cut into the bedrock, of the same type as those in the 4th-7th century cemetery identified between 1969 and 1989 underneath Palazzo della Loggia, inside the Priamàr fortress. The burial was presumed to be part of the vast cemetery that extended, according to late medieval sources, along the left flank and facade of the church.
Work took place in two adjacent sectors (7100 and 7200) situated respectively, to the west and south of an imposing bunker built during the Second World War that had completely obliterated the baptistery. However, it was possible to identify some of the walls joining the church to the baptistery and a long stretch of the left perimeter wall of the church itself. The latter was formed by two distinct phases: an early medieval one (presumably datable to the 8th century) and its successive elongation during the reconstruction of the Romanesque period. Thus, it is possible to suggest that the original single-naved early medieval church as well as being enlarged on the right side and transformed into a church with three aisles, also had the facade enlarged by the addition of two bays.
In addition to the burial found during the 1956-58 excavations, two more tombs were found. These were also rock-cut and part of the early medieval cemetery adjacent to the cathedral.
A system for collecting rainwater was identified that was part of the Genoese fortress. It had two small channels, which carried water to a large cistern that was built in 1730 and designed by Pietro Morettini.

Area 8000
The 6 × 6 m trench opened at the centre of the citadel’s courtyard aimed to find the cathedral’s facade wall in one of the few spaces not affected by the construction of the 18th century cistern. In addition to the 16th century curtain wall on the western front of the courtyard, the excavations exposed a stretch of the cathedral’s right perimeter wall on top of which the facade was probably constructed. Only through continuing this research will it possible to identify its exact position and therefore the precise dimensions of the church, obliterated during the course of the 16th century and of which only a schematic plan exists.