A three-year excavation project focusing on the garden area of the ‘Casa della Regina Carolina started in summer 2018. During the first season we completed LiDAR scan of the whole garden area and standing structures of the house, a GPR survey, and started the excavation in the northern portion of the garden. The trenches have revealed: 1) a thin soil layer pertaining to the ancient garden, only about 1 cm below the surface and much disturbed by the roots of the modern trees and plants that grow in the garden; 2) a ca. 50 cm-thick garden preparatory layer consisting in rubble (tile fragments, pieces of mortar, chunks of opus signinum floor, moulded plaster, wall painting fragments) and pottery; 3) below this layer, remains of a Republican building (a basalt threshold, interior to the building, which divided two rooms with floors in opus signinum with inserted polychrome limestone tesserae). Currently, we consider this earlier structure to have been a house, which was later demolished. The area occupied by this Republican house was completely remodelled by raising the surface level and creating the garden, which was in use at the time of the eruption. The chronological range revealed by the pottery found in the stratigraphy, the few fragments of wall paintings large enough to allow the identification of the decoration, and the Republican floors+ threshold discovered in situ suggest the following working chronology: a) 150-80 BC: floors of Republican house, dated on the basis of typology and exclusive use of coloured limestone (no marble) for the crustae ; 1-62 AD: dating of diagnostic pieces recognized in the rubbly, garden preparatory layer (e.g., fragments of opus signinum floors with small white marble tesserae; Third Style wall paintings; part of a Dressel 2-4; part of a Cretan amphora type 3; a shard of Italic sigillata-conspectus 38.3); AD 62-79: creation and use of the garden.

At this stage of the investigation, it is unclear whether the architectural and frescoes fragments recovered in the rubbly layer and dating to the 1st c. AD came from another part of the house we have identified at the bottom of our trenches, possibly damaged and knock down after the earthquake of 62, or whether the rubble was transported from elsewhere. The latest identifiable ceramic in the garden preparatory layer gives as terminus post quem for the construction of the garden the reign of Nero. Whether indeed the remodelling of the entire property occurred in the aftermath of the AD 62 earthquake or a few years earlier or later remains to be confirmed.