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English version TESTIMONIES ETRUSCHE AND ROMANS
English version ANGUILLARA - THE VILLA CLAUDIA
English version ANGUILLARA AND HER HISTORY
English version THE NEOLITHIC ERA OF LAKE BRACCIANO
English version LAKE BRACCIANO THE HISTORIC LANDSCAPE
English version VIA CLODIA
Italian version Geology of the lakes
Italian version Bracciano - Gli Orsini
Italian version Anguillara - The tower Orsini
English version Anguillara - The "Mura of S. Stefano"
Italian version Bracciano, The first human installations
Italian version Bracciano, traces of life Etrusca and Romana
Italian version Bracciano, The Christian and Medieval epoch
Italian version Bracciano, first strengthened structures
Italian version Bracciano - I Prefetti Di Vico
Lake Bracciano the historic landscape
The modem township of Trevignano stands on a basalt outcrop in the north-eastern sector of Lake Bracciano, about 43 km from Rome. Built on the lakeside, its geological! origin is closely linked to the volcanic area in which it stands. The igneous rocks that form the landscape of Trevignano are the most conspicuous evidence of all the volcanic activity that occurred first in the vicinity of Vico and then in the Sabatine area.
Agglomerates of tufa and basalt can be found in the geology of the entire area surrounding the lake and are a feature of the landscape. The eruptions of the Sabatine craters enlarged the lake and formed the Golfo di Cucumino and the basalt hill which overlooks present-day Trevignano.
The presence of thermal waters at Vicarello and Stigliano is connected to this activity We are talking about a remote past, the Quaternary and Neozoic period, about a million years ago.
A similar situation can be found in the rest of Lazio, especially the Colli Albani. From the Palaeolithic to the Villanovan period we see this phenomenon progressively decline in a slow, gradual settling-down of tectonic activity in the area, leading to its final shape and form.
In the middle of Southern Etruria there are three great lakes of volcanic origin: Vico, Bolsena and Bracciano. The three lakes have similar characteristics: each occupies the hollow formed by the walls of volcanic craters, with sheer internal! gradients and gentle outer slopes. Mso, as a result of their particular origin, each of the three lakes has only one outlet and they are therefore subject to variations in their water levee! at certain times. Finally, the radial drainage pattern they create gives rise to more fertile soil in the adjoining areas and attracts the presence of human habitation even on the coastal slopes. In the case of Lake Bracciano the Fosso dell’Arrone has allowed easy access from the inland area to the coast north of Rome.
These features - fertile soil, medicinal! spa waters, natural! routes connecting different parts of the area, not to mention a dry climate - particularly influenced the communities living there at that time in their choice of sites suitable for long-term settlement.
The earliest human presence in the Sabatine area

The first stage in the inhabitation of the Lazio region goes back to the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic period. Man-made articles typically involved the working of stones, from which single or double-sided slivers were chipped. Objects in witìich the entire surface of the slivers was worked are calied amygdalae, because of their almond-like shape.
At the present stage of research no stone materials belonging to this period appear to have been found. Therefore, on the basis of recent discoveries it can be said that the first cvidence of human activity in the Sabatine area comes from the shores of the lakes.The first signitìcant fmd from the Neolithic period, i.e. from the 6th millennium BC, is the village located at La Marmotta, to the north-east of the headland on which present-day Anguillara stands.

The ancient village stood on the shores of the Lake but now it has been found 350 metres from the shoreline and 8 metres below the surface. It is an isolated settlement built on wooden stakes, with its perimeter defined by a stockade ofwooden piles.After a period of inertia, or maybe abandonment, the vi!lage was reoccupied between the Old and Middle Bronze Age, from the 7th to the Sth centuries BC, at the same time as other sites located aiong the shore which correspond to the prese~TIt-day Vigna Grande, Vigna di Valle, Vicarello and Acquarelle, which also go back to the beginning of Appennine civilisation.
During this period we can see a definite and systematic inhabitation of the lake area.

At La Marmotta there is an extensive, monumental construction ofwooden piles, a kind of “land reclamation” carried out along the far edge of a flat area, beyond which the lake bed shelves steeply. A second structure consists of an enormous mass of stone, perhaps a burial mound, standing above the land reclamation. The second period of inhabitation of the site shows very intensive activity in which a society of individuals was at work, a rea! centre with already advanced and organised structures. The discovery of a dug-out canoe has to be seen as evidence that a part of the village was given over to boat-building and therefore involved in work of a seriously commercial and industrial! nature.
Other archaeological evidence in the Lake, at Vigna Grande, Vigna di Valle, Acquarelle and Vicarello, are located at depths of between fi-~ ve and twenty metres. Originally these settlements would certainly not have stood so far from the shore but at the water’s edge; this shows that over a period of thousands of years the rise and fai! of the water leve! has submerged these settlements and that the lake has grown in size.

Another interesting find in 1974 was the lake-village at Vicarello, 300 metres from the present shoreline and submerged at a depth of between three and eleven metres. From aerial photographs it is possible to make out the line of the shore which at that period curved outwards to form a headland. The lake-village consisted of a massive “stockade” discovered a certain distance from the shore which at the period of the quasi-conurbation must have functioned as the retaining wall of an embankment built of rubble, clay and beaten earth. Thick vertical piies driven into the bed of the lake were attached to long, slender horizontal ones. In the inner area nearer the shore traces of burning have been found on the piles and the stones. Three hundred metres from the shore at a depth of six metres three “heaps” of stones and rocks have been found which, on the basis of comparison with other contemporary villages in Lazio, are under
The material collected from inside the village consists of large vases and everyday crockery There are plenty of bone fragments belonging to pigs, sheep and cows, many of which show clear signs of burning.
There are two other lake-villages of similar structure: Vigna di Valle and Vigna Grande. Both are situated about 60-70 metres from the shore and built like the Vicarello settlement. Finds include almost intact ceramic-meta! utensi!s, glasses, amphorae, bowls - contemporary with those from Vicarello. At another lakeside site in the locality of Le Acquarelle, a large fragment of the skull of Bosprimigenius has been recovered, similar in form to the one discovered on Lake Garda and now in the Pigorini Museum in Rome.
From the type of materials discovered, a picture can be formed of the kind of life led by the first inhabitants of the Sabatine area. From !eading a nomadic existence, whose main activity was hunting and fishing, they had evolved by the end of the Early Bronze Age into herders and farmers, raising stock and tilling the soi!. Farm implements are always hewn out of stone but become more refined and functional for each activity
More recently, in the course of the 1990s, some archaeological strata were identified in the Rigostano necropolis at Trevignano as possibly belonging to a Late Bronze Age settlement (1200-1000 BC).The area containing the archaeological remains is the man-made ledge at the foot of the slope of the ancient necropolis. On a ledge of about 30 sq.m anima! remains and impasto potsherds mixed together with lots of cinders were discovered in the brown c!ay soil.
In 1894 research by Cozza and Pasqui led to the discovery of fortitìed terracing at the top of Monte Rocca Romana, dating from the beginning of the Late Bronze Age. A similar find came to light on nearby Monte Calvi.The two discoveries have supported the stili vague hypothesis of a link between the two inhabited areas, whereby the origina! Bronze Age settlement located on Rocca Romana cou!d later have expanded to nearby Monte Calvi.Therefore the so-ca!ied fortress defending the quasi-conurbation would be identified as the Rocca which, centuries !ater, was also used by the Orsini.
Finally, it should be noted that in the Bronze Age the Sabatine area is exclusively settled by lakeside dwellers and on!y at the end of that period (Late BronzeAge) are there any hill settlements, as confirmed by discoveries at Monte S.Angelo and other parts of the lake districts of Etruria.
The Archaic and Orientalising Villanovan periods

The term Villanovan is derived from the name of a small settlement, Villanova, 8km from Bologna, where traces were discovered of a culture which cremated its dead. The ashes of the dead person were placed in a typical clay urn in the shape of a double cone with lid. The funeral furnishings consisted of a few refined objects: a bronze half-moon razor, fibulae, clay plates and dishes. This culture was particularly widespread in parts of Italy and Europe between the 10th and 9th centuries BC.
Traces of this period include several pozzo tombs at La Bellera and in the larger necropolis at Via della Macchia, where by chance in early 1900 pozzo and fossa tombs were found. Inside one of the clay cinerary urns, covered with a bronze bowl, there was a woman‘s funeral furnishings consisting of ornaments such as necklaces made of glass and amber and bronze fibulae, all showing obvious signs of burning. The workmanship of these items displays dose similarities to Faliscan artefacts from the necropolises at Narce and Falerii Veteres. However, it should be stressed that the Via della Macchia necropolis, whose funerary practices place it fairly and squarely in the Villanovan period, shows a chronological shift inasmuch as it dates from the 8th century BC, indicating that its artefacts lagged behind other Etruscan zones because of the area’s peripheral position.
Around the 8th century BC there occurs what is known as Hellenisation i.e. the arrival of Greek influence through the colonies founded at Pithecusa (Ischia) and Cumae. This wave of ”outside” culture can be seen in the items used as funeral furnishings - refined imports belonging to a dead person of high social rank - and in a variation of the funeral rite, with a feast or symposium dominating. In Trevignano, at Le Rose, Rigostano, Olivete!lo and Via dei Castagni, the excavations carried out over the last thirty years have revealed a particularly extensive necropolis where tombs hewn out of the friable tufa are difficult to preserve and of little architectural value. Two kinds of burial are most widespread in the Orientalising period (from the 8th to the late 7th centuries BC) and the Archaic period (580-480 BC):
chamber tombs and fossa tombs with a funerary niche.
With few exceptions, chamber tombs are entered by way of a short dromos or access corridor; the buria! chamber is roughly hewn out of the tufa and rectangular in shape, with !edges along the sides or back wall on which top place the funeral furnishings. The densest area of concentration is along the northern sector of the Lake between Vicarello and Trevignano: there are just a few remains in the southern sector of the Sabatine area, at S.Giuliano-Macchia Muraccioli on the outskirts of Bracciano in that stretch of countryside that forms the hinterland of Caere.
Equally scarce are relics of the site’s inhabitation during the classical period. There are a few from the necropolis at Poggio delle Ginestre at the eastern end of the lake and a handful of finds from the Rigostano area along the central ridge of the Trevignano hinterland.
Romanisation

Historical sources (Livy Strabo, Co!umella) mention the presence of a Sabatine tribe absorbed by Rome in 387 BC after the capture of Veii. The area is also mentioned on account of its agricultural economy which must then have considerably influenced the Romans, who built country cottages there to take advantage of the rich, fertile soil.
During restoration work at the Rocca Orsini, brickwork was found be!onging to a water cistern and a layer of foundations, possibIy dating from the Sth-4th centuries BC.
On the boundary with the present-day Bracciano area the fine of a long conduit to carry water coming from the western slopes of Rocca Romana has been traced.
The Sabatine area was reached from Rome by the Via Clodia, which skirted Lake Bracciano. Who built the road and when is a controversial question: it may have been C. Claudius Centho, censor in 225 BC, or C. Clodius Vestalis, monetary triumvir in 43 BC, or perhaps C. Claudius Canina or C. Claudius Russus. In any case it was built after 280 BC, following the Roman conquest of north-western Etruria and prior to the foundation of the colony of Saturnia. Before it carne to be built, it is certain that Southern Etruria already had a road system which the Romans had to use and which was the reason for their gradual reorganisation of the road network, there being already a clearly signed and well-trodden route in use.
On the basis of the writings of classical authors (Cicero and Festus, Verrius Flaccus and Ovid), we can assume that the road was linked to the Cassia and Flaminia and headed out of Rome by Ponte Milvio, or perhaps Ponte Sublido, carrying on towards Veii then turning off north-westwards at the 9th mile to skirt Lake Bracciano, thus partly following the same line as the modem Braccianese.

Via Clodia at Crocicchie

Along this route, just south of the Lake in the locality of Crocicchie, near Anguillara, a long stretch of basalt paving is generally thought to be part of Via Clodia. The connection between the road and other Roman remains possibly belonging to a villa, which shows similarities to other sites elsewhere, leads one to assume that Lake Bracciano was served by a side-road leading off the Via Clodia and circling the lake to connect all the inhabited sites. Moreover, Via Clodia was not built just to reach this area but to link Rome with Viterbo via Blera, Norchia and Tuscania before continuing on to Chiusi.
In the republican period, at the end of the 2nd century BC, building often consisted of farmhouses and these could still be found in the area into the late imperia! age.
In the area south of Anguilara several examples have been discovered of self-sufficient dwellings complete with cisterns for their own water supply. So far a dozen or so sites have been marked out but it. has not been possible to carry out extensive investigations owing to !ack of funds, mainly due to the subsequent cost of maintaining the excavation. It is worth noting the Roman sites to the south of Anguillara: at Valle Facciano, Sant’Andrea, Sorti Lunghi and Vignali there are substantial remains of Roman villas from the late republican and early imperia! periods.
At Cancelli, Riserva di Facciano and also on the plain of Crocicchie there are stretches of Roman basalt paving visible, which were part of the side-roads leading off the Via C!odia. The Soprintendenza, in collaboration with the local branch of the Carabinieri and the Nucleo Tutela Patrimonio Artistico (Artistic Heritage Protection Unit) is setting up continuous supervision of the area in order to prevent the deplorable and notorious practice of looting by .illegal operators, whose real purpose is to damage and then sell a part of our cultural heritage abroad.

Villa Acqua Claudia

There are two villas in the Anguillara area where the site is easy to interpret: the monumental residence known as “Acqua Claudia”, because it is surrounded by land belonging to the S. Pellegrino plant, and the other known as Mura di S.Stefano.
The first of these was partially excavated in 1934 and dates from the first half of the 1st century BC. It consists of a great semicircle of 42 semicircular niches placed at regular intervals and framed by half-columns backed by pillars; behind these the actual villa itself is built on three floors, arranged into different rooms with different functions. The brickwork is composed of cubilia - blocks of local tufa - laid as opus reticulatum; some parts in plain brick are purely functional. At the front of the semicircle there is a system of water conduits which in time has led to the opinion that the villa was not so much a place of residence as a sanctuary. This is because there is a thermal spring with medicinal properties, still in use today, and because of the monumental scale of the entire establishment and its architectural design.
The villa known as “Mura di S.Stefano” is an imposing, solitary three-storey structure situated along the road of the same name, in open country dominating the whole of the surrounding area. Unfortunately, because of a total lack of adequate funding it has not been possible to restore this monument which is in a precarious state.
The building was well-known to academics and architects of the past, such as Pirro Ligorio, Andrea Palladio and Piranesi. It consists of three floors built in plain brick, is 21 m long by I7m wide and is preserved to a maximum height of 18m. Each floor is decorated on the outside by a different style of pilaster strip: Corinthian on the ground floor, Doric on the first floor and on the partially preserved second floor a style defined by Ligorio as Corinthian.

Mura of Santo Stefano

The use of two-tone decorative brickwork on the facade is interesting, using dark red and orange-yellow bricks. These are also used to outline the arches, columns and cornices, this polychromatic effect adding a special refinement to the architecture. The building must have been enclosed within a perimeter wall, as the drawings by Ligorio and Palladio. wouid suggest.
An entrance hall led into a main hall which was square and divided by four pillars. The roof must have been vaulted and the walls decorated with marble of different colours.
Reconstruction of the upper floors is not straightforward, although it is interesting to note that they were built of lighter materials than the ground floor. Harder still is the question of what the superstructure and roofing were like. Scholars have suggested various possibilities: two sloping roofs; no roof over the central area of the villa but a system of four roofs, one for each side of the building, as used in many villas and monuments of the same period; or a single flat roof for the entire building, leaving the central area and the belvedere turret open to the sky.
Structurally and decoratively, however, it is easy to compare the Santo Stefano villa with the Tomb of Annia Regilla (2nd century AD), or the Temple of Fortuna Muliebre and the warehouses at Ostia and Pompeii. There are no buildings from later periods which display a similar technique: the widespread use of different coloured bricks for decoration died out in the period after the emperor Commodus (180-192 AD).
The final question is what the building was used for. It might have been a huge warehouse for storing grain but certainly the details of decorative refinement belie that interpretation. It might have been an imperial mausoleum but then the windows, stairs and other architectural features would appear to be superfluous and lend little credence to such a theory
It is much more likely to have been a sumptuous residence in a farming area, dose to Rome and commanding the surrounding area. The owner could have belonged to a senatorial family and to the equestrian order, as Ligorio asserts, even naming him as “Caius Cecilius, a Roman knight”. Next to the villa is a water cistern dating from the mid-2nd century AD, like the house itself, and also the apse of an 8th-9th century church. The mediaeval construction would suggest that the area and the residence continued to be used after the late imperial period. Furthermore the presence of the mediaeval building corroborates the theory that the villa was used until a much later period and confirms the existence of the domuscultae - large agricultural estates -which were originally private property before being inherited by the church and administered by the papacy. Rural settlements like these originated with the late-imperial latifundia. In the 4th century AD the barbarian invasions reduced the number of farming settlements and their inhabitants, having survived the destruction of civil wars, sought new sites to settle, preferably far from roads and scattered around the open countryside to avoid further raids. A few remains from the period are located in the countryside between Veii and Nepi.
Going southwards, between Crocicchie and Vigna di Valle, illegal operations have done irreversible damage to the archaeological heritage, while at the same time ringing to light another area that was heavily “built up” in Roman times. Excavation and a precise survey carried out by the Soprintendenza in collaboration with the Artistic Heritage Protection Unit and other cultural associations have added new knowledge about the zone: a number of settlements have been identified and in so-me cases pinpointed on the maps of the Istituto Geografico Militare .These are all self-sufficient farming settlements equipped with large cisterns for water supply. The sites registered date from the late-republican (2nd-1st centuries BC) to the imperial period (1st-3rd centuries AD).
Going north-eastwards, there are two Roman sites to note in the Bracciano sector: the late republican-early imperial villa of S. Celso, on the road which goes around the lake, and the ruins of Forum Clodii near San Liberato. Also dose to the shore of the lake are the remains of residences and farmhouses between Vigna di Valle and Vigna Orsini, each with a stretch of basalt roadway that was a branch off the Via Clodia.
South of Bracciano at S.Giuliano, Fontanile dell’Aspro, Cupinoro and Macchia Muraccioli, looting by illegal excavators has highlighted a sector of significant archaeological and historical interest.
This is a “border” zone between Bracciano and Cerveteri, allowing access from the ancient city of Caere-Cerveteri to the hinterland: the open and fertile surrounding countryside was inevitably settled for agriculture and stock-raising, even though each settlement consisted of only a few families.
The “urgent” excavations carried out by the Soprintendenza to stem the loss of historical data and, especially, of the archaeological relics much sought after abroad, have revealed complex structures in which residential zones were adjoined by strictly agricultural zones. Worth noting is a small but functional balneum containing areas used for private baths in a residence excavated at Macchia Muraccioli. The villa dates from the 1st century BC to the early-1st century AD. A comparison with other domestic structures in Latium from this period reveals no other examples of baths being attached to dwellings.

Aqueduct of Mordacchina

Above Vicarello at Mordacchina, on the western slopes of Monte Rocca Romana, a vaulted structure has been discovered built in opus reticulatum, used for crossing a ditch, and sections of a brick-built underground cavern, probably the remains of a water-pipe carrying one of the streams of spring-water connected to Trajan’s aqueduct (fig.07).
Between Vigna Orsini and Sette Botti lies the extensive agricultural estate of Vicarello. The site is located along the northern shore of Lake Bracciano about 3km from Trevignano.
The antiquities of Vicarello have been well known since 1852 when by good fortune a votive cache was discovered containing a wealth of precious vases made of gold, silver and bronze, currently in the care of the Vatican Museums, together with an abundant hoard of coins now housed in the Museo Nazionale Romano at Palazzo Massimo, where they were sent after 1870 from the Museo Kircheriano. Unfortunately, a large number of these finds went missing in transit.
The historical and archaeological importance of the cache is due to the widespread custom in the ancient world of leaving votive offerings consisting of particularly valuable objects relating to worship of the god of nature in its various forms,in this specitìc case the waters from medicina! springs.
Visiting the “miraculous” site for its medicina! benefits started as far back as the 8th century BC and continued with no sign of decine until the 4th century AD, with periods of particuiar enthusiasm for the springs in the mid-late republican era. The renown of the piace is evident from the coins, which come from a wide radius extending beyond Etruria to Umbria and Campania.The four silver vases dating from the Àugustan era are engraved with the route from Cadiz to Rome and prove that at that time the sacred piace was widely known outside the confines of Ita!y. Human presence in this bocality goes back to prehistoric times, as is shown by the flint tools - knives, scrapers, arrowheads, leftover chippings - found in the votive cache and undoubtedly deposited before the other material from the 8th century BC.
It is worth emphasising that the foca! point of this area is the thermal spring and that its importance has remained unchanged in the course of time.
Severa! chamber tombs discovered in 1885 date back to around the 6th century BC: hewn out of the tufa, they contain a depository shelf on the long wall of the buria! chamber, while the funeral furnishings were pbaced a!ong the short wa!!.
More tombs of the same period were found in 1980 whi!e farmwork was in progress, showing that the site was inhabited in the Etruscan era.
In Roman times the extensive area corresponding to the present-day farm estate became permanently inhabited.

Vicarello villa - Roman foundations

At various points in the zone sections of Roman road paved with basa!t have come to light beading to an impressive villa. Clear traces of its wal!ing remain, sometimes detached but more often enc!osed within the little church of the Annunziata and in the l6th century farmhouse of the estate. The foundations on the southern slope facing the lake reveal powerful buttresses showing the me of the arcades that gave access to the villa. Numerous remains of brickwork relating to the construction of the villa are visible over a wide radius west of the Settevene-Palo road.
An examination of the walls and hallmarks on the bricks makes it possible to date this villa between the second half of the lst century AD and the second half of the 2nd centuryAD. Access to it was from the road following the shoreline of the lake and then by a side-road, the junction with which has been discovered in the vicinity of the fisherman’s cottage seen when approaching from the direction of Bracciano. The villa enjoyed a magnificent view overlooking the lake.


 

Vicarello baths - overall view

Even more impressive is the other ancient complex: the thermal baths known as Aquae Apollinares and mentioned in the Itinerarium Antonini and the Ta buia Peutingeriana.The spot where the great thermal baths must have stood is slightly more rugged than the site of the residential villa, by the si-de of a ditch which was already embanked in Roman times. Only part of it has been excavated. We can now reconstruct the layout of the site on the basis of the emerging structures: a large water-cistern uphi!l and an extensive building complex at the foot of the slope. North of the ditch is a great rectangular area with an apse on both the shorter sides covered by a cross-vaulted roof. The f!oor, inlaid with marb!e of different colours is beautifully made. In the centre of the area is a small bath from the mediaeval period. Ori the east-west axis a wide arcade opens onto a nymphaeum and fountain with marble-clad steps. During the excavations of 1977 a statue in white marble representing Apollo was found, which must have stood at the top of the bath.

 

 

Vicarello - the baths


In the eariy part of the last century restoration work carried out ori a bath built in 1692 by the Collegio Germanico Ungarico revealed structures beionging to the ancient site.A1-so it was possible to confirm that the hot spring used in 1600 and ori into the last ceritury is the same one that fed the Roman baths. In tliis section where the building formerly belonging to the Collegio stands, a marb!e head of Aesculapius (a Roman copy of the Alexandrian original), a headiess female bust with cloak and a Corinthian capita! were discovered, all now ori show at the Vatican Museums.
The architecture of the ancient baths is completed by a closed portico with a series of arches and half-pillars.

 

 

 

Statue of Apollo

According to the historian Suetonius, the building of the baths cari be ascribed to the emperor Domitian, who in all probability visited the site to treat his ailments with the medicinal waters. Subsequently Trajan set about supplying the baths with a further source of water from the streams flowing into the !ake. In the vicinity ofVicarello you cari stili see the aqueduct of Traj ari and Paul, which the ernperor Trajan had built in 112 AD and which was later restored by Pope Paul V. People still went to the hamlet of Vicardllo even after the 4th century AD, when Rome and its environs were under invasion from the barbarians. From the mid-1 5th century to the present day the structure of the hamlet has been maintained with the villa-farmhouse, the baths and the magnificent estate.
Nearby Trevignano did not escape Roman presence.That notable literary source Livy reminds us that it was home to the Gens Trebonia, a family of tribunes and courageous consuls who dominated Rornan affairs from the Sth century BC right to the end of the 1st ceritury BC. This family helped with the granting of citizenship to the inhabitants living on the site of present-day Trevignano and must have ncouraged the merging of the indigenous popuiation with its conquerors. Even the piace name Trevignano is said to come from the family-name Trebonianum. Strabo and Columelia also mention Tre bonianum as a farming and fishing centre frequented by the Romans.
Traces of earlier ancient inhabitation have been discovered at Colle San Pietro, la Sarraciriesca, on top of the Rocca and in the old town.

 

 

Marble slap

Worth noting are the slabs of decorative and building marble, whose exact origin has not been recorded but which stand ori the public lawns opposite the Municipal Museum and the main square.
Together with these is a marble funerary cippus dedicated to Gaulus Capito Maximianus, recording bis interesting “cursus honorum” and dating from the 3rd century AD.
Finally, on show inside the museum there is a funerary slab of Lunigiana marble dating from between the late repub!ican and the imperial era dedicated by the freedman Varro to Cartilius Menippus and, subsequent!y by the freedwoman Cartilia Hiiara to P. Cartilius Varro and Roia Polla.
Opposite stands what is probably the marble foot of a column with flora! decoration from the Roman imperia! era.
Even a small centre like Trevignano must have suffered a fierce backlash from the invasion of the barbarians in the 4th century AD. The Sabatine area was hard-hit and, in particular, the Baths of Vicarello and Stigliano were destroyed; accumulated wealth was raided and pillaged and many buildings, villas and parts of aqueducts were severely damaged.

Following the later wrath of the Lombards, in the 8th century AD, Trevignano and many places around the lake carne under the dominiom of the Church. Ida Caruso

 

 

Cippus dedicated to G.C. Maximianus
Decorative foot of column