Season Team

• AIAC_28 - Madonna dei Colori - 1998
  In southern Sabina, in the area called Madonna dei Colori, la Soprintendenza per I Beni Archeologici del Lazio has been investigating since 1998 the villa belonging to the Bruttii Praesentes, a senatorial family related by marriage to the emperor Commodus. The complex was already known in archaeological literature for the important finds of marble statues, at present located in Copenhagen, Rome, Berlin, Dresden and Paris. The new investigations have brought to light the impluvium of the villa, the fauces, a series of rooms used for representation, a latrine and a bath complex. The recovered materials allow the dating of the occupation of the site between the early imperial period and the beginning of the fifth century AD. It is not possible, on the basis of the available facts, to state with certaintly exactly when the residential building changed function. The presence of the church of the Madonna dei Colori as early as the beginning of the ninth century is certain, however, as the written documentation attests. Investigations conducted below the pavement level of the sacred building, which was constructed on the remains of the older residential complex, have brought to light tombs of the fourth-fifth century AD.