Prior to the construction of a basement at No. 7 via Santa Maria della Porta a rescue excavation was undertaken due to the building’s position in an area of high archaeological risk. In fact, it is situated within the extensive area, delimited by via Torino, c.so Magenta, via Santa Maria della Porta and via Nirone, which has produced, during the course of various interventions undertaken up until very recently, numerous remains of residential buildings. These structures, whose plans and décor indicated high status, qualified this quarter as the site of the Palatium commissioned by the Emperor Maximilian and built between the 3rd and 4th century A.D. and to which it is possible to link the remains belonging to a reception area which were uncovered in the 1950s in via Brisa. The area under excavation covered circa 190 m2 extending at a right angle to via Santa Maria della Porta, which corresponds with a stretch of the town’s decumanus maximus.

In 1985 an archaeological investigation in the cellars of the adjacent No. 5 led to the identification of a series of Roman walled structures which must also have been part of the insula facing onto the _decumanus _ and connected with the imperial palace.

The present investigation defined the link with some of the structures whose foundations emerged during the 1885 excavation and eight phases of activity were identified, from the Roman period to the present day.