As has been the case for much of the last ten years, the most notable archaeological discoveries in 2016–17 have concerned the works for the new Metro C, which has now reached the city walls and is working its way beneath the Caelian from San Giovanni to the Colosseum.Footnote ¹ In Via Sannio the remains of a suburban garden property were encountered, dating to the mid-first century AD. A portico bordered a small watercourse, parallel to which was a triple row of olle perforate, that is, pots buried in the soil for the planting of shrubs or small trees. In the Severan period a wall was built, dividing the portico from the watercourse. No remains of living quarters were encountered, which raised the possibility that the garden may have formed a part of the property whose residential zone is represented by the houses which survive beneath the basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano, just 100 m to the north.Footnote ² In Via Amba Aradam, near the junction with Via della Ferratella, the excavation of an air shaft brought to light two rooms of a Trajanic building in opus mixtum whose first floor had collapsed in a fire.Footnote ³ Exceptionally for Rome, the timber ceiling of the first-floor chamber was preserved, together with two wooden furniture legs. The bones of a dog, trapped at the moment of the building's collapse, were found. The initial hypothesis is that this is a part of the same complex of barracks found nearby last year, perhaps the officers’ quarters, or part of a thermal wing.Footnote ⁴

The most exciting find in the new stretch of tunnelling was made during the excavation of an air shaft on the Caelian, directly in front of the Military Hospital in Piazza Celimontana. Due to the nature of the works an exceptional depth was reached, leading to the discovery, a full 18 m beneath current ground level, of an ancient underground aqueduct, built of cappellaccio blocks.Footnote ⁵ The remains encountered ran in a westerly direction for 32 m, with a specus of c. 2 m in height. The channel abutted (and partially demolished) a large tufa water basin, also built of cappellaccio. The pottery from the aqueduct's foundation trench suggested a date for its construction in the early third century BC — broadly consonant, therefore, with that of the Anio Vetus (c. 272 BC). However, given its great depth and, above all, its location, the hypothesis of the excavators is that the monument is Rome's oldest aqueduct, the Aqua Appia, which according to Frontinus was completed in 312 BC.Footnote ⁶ The remains were dismantled and are now in storage, awaiting reassembly and eventual display in a museum space yet to be assigned.

The new metro line will effect interchanges with Linea A at San Giovanni and Linea B at Colosseo stations. During works for the latter, the remains of a fountain basin were found, in an excavation below the colonnades of the Temple of Venus and Rome.Footnote ⁷ The new station at San Giovanni is expected to open in autumn 2017, but two open days were held in the spring, during which the public was able to admire its integration of archaeology and architecture, whereby the visitor descends three levels to the platforms, each laid out with the finds and explanatory panels relating to the stratigraphy encountered during the building's construction.Footnote ⁸ The displays in the ticket offices feature objects found at the upper, post-antique levels (such as Renaissance pottery), including much reused and redeposited ancient material (marble architectural fragments). The intermediate, or interchange, level contains the important finds from the late Republican and first-century AD agricultural site.Footnote ⁹ Arrowheads and fish hooks, fragments of wicker baskets and wooden garden tools, even peach stones and pine cones, are displayed, as well as an unusual assemblage of fragments of terracotta animal statues. Most impressive is the elaborate irrigation system used to supply the estate: over 60 m of terracotta channels and pipes were found, some with their bronze sprinklers still intact. The plan of the great open water basin (originally measuring c. 70 m × 35 m) is marked out in the modern pavement. Finally, at the lowest, platform level, the visitor reaches the Pleistocene strata, whose characteristics inspire the decoration and text of the modern walls.

Other excavations inside the city received less attention in the media. Building works to convert the former Il Messaggero printing press in Via Urbana, next to S. Pudenziana, into apartments revealed second-century AD insulae fronting onto the Vicus Patricius.Footnote ¹⁰ Overlying Republican terracing walls some 8 m beneath modern ground level, two blocks of a Hadrianic complex divided by a courtyard were encountered, with Severan additions. The structure survived up to its first-floor level, with pavements in mosaic and opus spicatum. In January 2017 a polychrome floor mosaic representing gardens and landscapes was found in piazza Dante on the Esquiline during building works in the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti edifice.Footnote ¹¹ The ancient complex to which it belonged had already been investigated by Giuseppe Gatti in 1909, but the building's original pavement level had not been reached till now.Footnote ¹² The apsed hall is perhaps a nymphaeum belonging to the Horti Lamiani. A plan to re-lay the mosaic in a specially constructed building in the piazza was rejected by local residents, who prefer the space's current function as a (real) garden.

In the suburbs, discoveries comprised tombs and aqueducts. Additional research on the important necropolis at the fifth mile of the Via Flaminia, wherein was discovered the remains of the mausoleum of M. Nonnius Macrinus (so-called Tomba del Gladiatore) in 2008, revealed that the entire funerary zone was devoted to the tombs of the military.Footnote ¹³ Many stelae of Praetorians have been found, and remains of a finely decorated marble tomb of the Julio-Claudian period, belonging to an official of equestrian rank.Footnote ¹⁴ In the late antique period, one of the tombs had been converted to a workshop for the washing and dyeing of textiles (fullonica). Excavations at Casal Bernocchi at the fifth mile of the Via Ostiensis, where a new Orthodox church is being built, have revealed a small rural settlement with a bath complex adjacent to a necropolis.Footnote ¹⁵ The bath and a rectangular columbarium preserved their floor mosaics. The restoration of the aqueduct of the Villa of the Quintilii, whose slender brick arches form such an evocative sight on the road from Ciampino airport, was completed in April 2017. The works revealed the exceptional survival of four chestnut beams, preserved in the piers where they had been embedded during the original construction in the Hadrianic period to support the centring of the arches.Footnote ¹⁶ One fragment even preserved its bark. On the Via Prenestina, attention was redirected to the Aqua Appia. During building works for the enormous ‘Nuovo Centro Servizi Prenestino’ near the junction with Via Palmiro Togliatti, ancient inspection shafts (putei) were found dug into the tufa bedrock, leading to an underground aqueduct, 21 m beneath ground level, running east–west.Footnote ¹⁷ Speleologists explored the channel for a distance of c. 50 m, noting that the vault of the specus was constructed in ancient concrete. The initial hypothesis is that this is either a rebuilt section of the Aqua Appia, or else the Augustan ramus Augustae, both of which are recorded here by Frontinus.Footnote ¹⁸ In the same area (the new quartiere Prampolini), the archaeologists encountered what the newspaper described as two fourth-century AD temple tombs, next to the remains of a lime kiln.

As ever, the restoration of major archaeological monuments has been an important theme this year. The investigations carried out over the last eight years at the southern end of the Circus Maximus, which have revealed the remains of the Arch of Titus and partially reconstructed the ground-floor ambulatory, were completed and the site opened to the public.Footnote ¹⁹ The terrible series of earthquakes which devastated great parts of Abruzzo and Umbria between August 2016 and January 2017 caused little damage in Rome, but when in January 2017 a large portion of the facing of the Aurelianic Walls between the Porta Salaria and the Praetorian Camp fell, the authorities were swift to advance the tremors as a cause.Footnote ²⁰ Polemic was aroused in the press, with the widespread suspicion that the lack of regular maintenance over decades was a more likely reason.Footnote ²¹ In May 2017 during restoration of the Arch of Janus in the Forum Boarium a discovery made some time ago by a Spanish team was rebroadcast and captured the interest of the Italian media. Archaeologists from the University of Mérida, who have been surveying the monument since 2011, had photographed an inscription in secondary use inside the staircase to the attic storey which bore a dedication to Constantine, thus going some way to confirming the generally accepted hypothesis that the arch is to be identified with the Regionary Catalogues’ Arcus Divi Constantini.Footnote ²²

At the Catacombs of Domitilla, major works to clean and restore the complex's rich assemblage of third- and fourth-century frescos have also led to the installation of a small lapidarium, displaying sculptural finds from this and other catacombs.Footnote ²³ Monumental Attic sarcophagi from the above-ground areas of the Catacombs of Praetextatus (featuring the Seasons, Endymion, and scenes from the life of Achilles) were partially reconstructed, together with inscriptions (including the famous epitaph of Cucumius, the Christian cloakroom attendant, or capsararius, of the Baths of Caracalla in the late fourth century) and funerary portraits. Amongst the latter was an interesting case of the reuse of ancient sculpture: in the late fourth century an early imperial herm of a male divinity had its genitals removed and was re-carved to represent a woman.

Two exhibitions held in 2017 explored and documented the daily life and urbanism of two notable ancient monuments in the post-antique period. ‘I fori dopo i fori’, held at the Markets of Trajan from March to September, displayed finds from the medieval and modern settlement of the imperial fora zone: marble architectural furnishings from the early medieval churches, thirteenth- and sixteenth-century coin hoards, pottery (including tenth-/eleventh-century vetrina pesante and sixteenth-century maiolica, some from the large kiln excavated some years ago in the Forum of Trajan), and even everyday objects (spectacles, razor blades) from the last phases of life of the Quartiere Alessandrino prior to the demolitions of the 1920s.Footnote ²⁴ ‘Colosseo. Un'icona’, held at the Colosseum from March 2017 to January 2018, followed the afterlife of the Flavian amphitheatre through the Middle Ages and into the era of the Grand Tour, focusing in addition on the monument's influence on early modern and modern popular culture.Footnote ²⁵ The archaeological component of the exhibition comprised finds from the Roma Tre University's excavations of medieval habitation levels in the ground floor cunei III, IX and X, mentioned in ‘Notes from Rome’ 2011–12: animal bones, pottery and items of clothing (buttons, studs and a bronze plaque).Footnote ²⁶

The juxtaposition of the modern and ancient has been the leitmotif of this year's gazette. We started with the display of ancient artefacts in a modern metro station and finish now with a surprisingly modern addition to Rome's Capitoline collections. The train of Pope Pius IX, Italy's first, has become a permanent exhibit at the Montemartini Museum, the former power station which since 1997 has been home to some of the city's most important pictorial and sculptural objects. The papal contraption consists of three carriages, built by a French company in 1858 at a cost of 140,000 francs. The first wagon, the balconata, is equipped with its own loggia for papal benedictions. The second is a private apartment with throne room, and the third a chapel painted by Gérôme. Silver-plated angels and button-backed tapestry settees take their place in a new hall reclaimed from the power station's boiler rooms, next to the early Republican finds from the Esquiline necropolis and the Barberini togatus.Footnote ²⁷