During the restoration and restructuring of Villa Sottocasa, new data was collected relating to the villa’s earliest phases. Six rooms were investigated (A-F) on the ground floor around the Corte del Torchio. These rooms preserved the fragmentary remains of walls in cobbles and mortar, belonging to the phases preceding the present structure. They appear to have been levelled and partially re-used but it is not possible to establish a chronology due to the lack of datable material. A certain uniformity can be noted in the construction techniques of the walls and the types of building materials used, an indication that the alterations must have been carried out within a fairly short space of time. To date the most interesting finds are constituted by re-used Roman and late antique materials. Inside room A, the first on the eastern side of the Corte del Torchio, a sarcophagus lid in serizzo granite was found walled into the north-eastern corner. Placed upside down and provided with a drainage hole it had been used as a sink (measurements: 2.15 x 1.10m; thickness: 10-14 cm). The large structure facing onto the so-called Corte Rustica, originally used as a greenhouse, contains a _sarcophagus_ that was re-used as a tank. This is probably an archaeological find that was discovered and kept during work on the systematization of the park or even during excavations for the construction of the villa itself. In fact, these operations may have touched a part of the late antique cemetery found in 1933 (unpublished) not far north of the villa. (Adriana Briotti)