This was the first campaign of excavations as part of the “Vulci Cityscape” Project (https://vulcityscape.hypotheses.org) in the area of a new temple in Vulci Archaeological Park. The work is part of a wider project aimed towards a better understanding of Vulci’s urban landscape and of the organisation and reciprocal relationships between various sectors and functional spaces of sacred, residential and productive character, in a diachronic perspective from the city’s foundation until its abandonment.

The excavations took place in a public sacred area, identified by a geophysical survey in 2020, and aimed to date the temple’s phases and identify its typology and architecture. A further objective was to understand the relationship between the temple and the adjacent road in order to position it within the urban fabric. In fact, this is a crucial sector for understanding the ancient city in the immediate vicinity of the large temple.

An area of c. 220 m2 was opened at the north-eastern corner of the new temple. Structures belonging to the temple but also earlier and later phases were uncovered. The earliest evidence relates to both the occupation of the plateau during the early Iron Age and a probable building pre-dating the temple. As the podium fill was intact, it was possible to reconstruct its construction technique and date it provisionally to the late archaic period. The new temple, in large tufa blocks, appears to be of the heterogeneous Etrusco-Italic peripteral type, like the nearby large temple. However, unlike the latter, the new temple probably stood in ruins and was partially robbed in the early imperial period. An adjacent road on the north side of the podium was probably renewed in the same period. In the late1st/early 2nd century A.D., parts of the temple were demolished and the road went out of use.

Thus far, the excavations seem to show a long continuity of use from the early Iron Age to the 2nd century A.D., with various alterations and reorganisations of the area, which is very useful for the reconstruction of Vulci’s urban layout, preserved intact from its origins to the later Roman phases.