The Baths of Trajan, often seen as the monument that introduced the canonic Roman thermae type, generally have been overshadowed by their better preserved successors of Caracalla and Diocletian. Archaeological investigations carried out since 1998 by the Sovraintendenza Archeologica of the Comune di Roma (now renamed ‘Roma Capitale’), directed by Rita Volpe and Giovanni Caruso, have done much to re-balance this state of affairs, and results from the past year, revealed in the newspapers and previewed at a lecture at the British School at Rome in April 2012, have been amongst the most surprising. Ancient workmen's graffiti, painted directly on the brick facing of the northwest exedra, record the dates that individual sections of construction were completed and have now been found to continue from the foundations to the cornice.Footnote ¹ The full duration of the Baths' construction can now be calculated as five years — exactly the same conclusion reached (using entirely different methods) by Janet DeLaine for the central block of the Baths of Caracalla.Footnote ² Finds from beneath the complex are particularly interesting. In continuing to excavate the service corridor in which the famous ‘città dipinta’ fresco was found, archaeologists have revealed an astonishing wall mosaic of Neronian or Flavian date. In fragmentary condition, the mosaic extends over 15 m of walling and has been uncovered to a depth of 2 m. It represents Apollo, the Muses and a philosopher set against a scaena frons type architectural background.Footnote ³ There is nothing in Rome to compare with so monumental a mosaic — the only similar one, that of the so-called Horti Sallustiani beneath the barracks of the Corazzieri in via XX Settembre, despite its better condition, covers only 6.5 m. Any direct link between the Domus Aurea and the new mosaic has been excluded so far. The complex of pre-Trajanic buildings and roads so far revealed beneath the Baths' exedra now extends for c. 2,500 square metres, and is dated tentatively to the Flavian period.

Another well-known but poorly understood monument about which important new information was divulged at the British School at Rome is the Cloaca Maxima. At a lecture in February 2012, Elisabetta Bianchi (Roma Capitale) and Luca Antognoli (Associazione Roma Sotteranea) gave the first public notice of a new project to explore and document the great drain's surviving, multi-layered fabric, carried out by archaeologists and speleologists in the sector underlying the Forum Romanum and Imperial Fora.Footnote ⁴ It is important to bear in mind that what is generally referred to as the Cloaca Maxima in fact comprises a complex network of main drains, subsidiary branches, and dead-ends resulting from the replacement of older sections with more recent bypasses, nearly all of which contain multiple construction phases and later restorations (in many cases running continuously from the Archaic period to the present day). Perhaps the single most important observation to emerge is that the principal stretch, under the Forum Romanum, shows quite clearly that the original phase, of cappellaccio tufa, was roofed, using a technique similar to the ‘dromoi’ of archaic Etruscan tombs. The roofing was effected by laying the blocks in inwardly stepped courses; since the overall span needing to be bridged measured c. 3.7 m, the channel was divided longitudinally by a continuous, central wall that served to support the centre of the false vault, whose extrados formed the paving of the sixth-century Forum.Footnote ⁵ The ‘canal’ of Plautus therefore cannot be this main stretch of the drain, but perhaps an open ‘tributary’ or a section further downstream. None of the upstream sections towards the Subura was as ancient as that of the Forum, with the remains dating to a period running from the third century bc to the Flavian era.

A conference held at the Palazzo Massimo in October 2011 presented a detailed account of the excavations of perhaps the most interesting of the monumental finds from the recent works relating to the Metro C, the so-called Athenaeum. This is the complex formed of three large halls arranged fan-like around the northwest corner of Trajan's Column, visible from piazza Venezia.Footnote ⁶ A sage stratigraphical introduction by the excavator, Giovanni Ricci, clearly revealed how the vicissitudes of the site's urban history had led to the great central hall's astonishing preservation and its escape from previous archaeological investigations in the area. The architecture and decoration of the central hall were described by Roberto Egidi and Matteo Bruni. Measuring 23 × 13 m, it was roofed with a barrel vault, fragments of which were found in the excavation, with stucco coffering on the intrados and traces of a pavement level on the upper side. The interior, arranged like the Curia with a central nave and wide, low steps to either side, would have had room for 200 seats on the steps. It was paved and faced in marble (Teos, bigio and Ephesus). Brick stamps dated to ad 123 and 125. Two bases of statues erected by Fabius Felix Passifilius Paulinus studiis suis attested to the continuity of the hall as a place of culture well into the fifth century: his urban prefecture was dated within the period c. 450–76 by Silvia Orlandi. The building's post-antique history began in the sixth century, when it was taken over for a metalworking establishment. Vasco La Salvia produced the intriguing hypothesis that this was part of the Ostrogothic mint of Rome: in addition to the reclaiming of bronze marble cramps and their melting down to produce copper, ingots and even some coin blanks had been found. Several tombs were dug into the hall's floor in the late seventh and early eighth centuries. The building subsequently was given over to stabling (numerous attachments for tethering animals were found in the denuded walls) before collapsing in an earthquake, probably that of 847.

For the first time in many years, no major discoveries were announced on the Palatine (although excavations continue in the mysterious area to the north of the Domus Flavia's second court).Footnote ⁷ But the rich sequence of finds in the past years in the Domus Tiberiana (including a first-century bcdomus above the Velabrum and a monumental Claudian basin containing a T-shaped Severan basement in the Orti Farnesiani) received detailed publication by Maria Antonietta Tomei and Maria Grazia Filetici.Footnote ⁸ The enigmatic remains of ‘Nero's round dining-room’ in the Vigna Barberini were presented to the public in a lecture at the Accademia dei Lincei by their excavator, Françoise Villedieu, in March 2012.Footnote ⁹ The full height of the great circular basement for the vanished structure above is 12 m. The basement has two tiers of radial arches and, at the level of the second tier, a door-like aperture in the circumference wall, apparently providing access to an ‘area tecnica’. Signs of the removal of metal fixtures were encountered in the masonry, and the uppermost surface of the substructure bore small hemispherical cavities, similar to those known from Caligula's boat-house at Nemi: these were interpreted as the housings for ancient ball-bearings, installed to aid the rotation of the vanished upper structure. The proposal of the excavator, accepted by presenters Filippo Coarelli and Antonio Giuliani, was that the monument is indeed the cenatio of Suetonius, and that it would have been turned using hydraulic power — which would also presuppose a Neronian date for the arrival of a new, high-level aqueduct on the hill. Elsewhere on the Palatine, the intention was broadcast to open to the public the so-called Sala dei Capitelli, the great Hadrianic hall decorated with vault stuccoes adjoining the Stadium, currently used as a storeroom for over-sized capitals.Footnote ¹⁰

Information regarding the after-life of Roman monuments came from the Colosseum. Excavations carried out by the Università degli Studi Roma Tre, directed by Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, have confirmed and elucidated what was known from late medieval property documents: in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries the ground-floor arcades were occupied by humble habitations, enclosures and workshops, whose inhabitants were engaged in wine-making and stabling animals.Footnote ¹¹ Finds included hearths with remains of animal bones and of mollusc and tortoise shells, which are to be displayed in the expanding permanent museum of the first-floor ambulatory.Footnote ¹² The link between the Colosseum and commercial activity in the private sector was underlined and updated by lengthy and hotly discussed negotiations with the shoe manufacturer Della Valle regarding the possibility of a deal to provide sponsorship for the restoration of the monument in exchange for publicity and advertising space.Footnote ¹³

If many of this year's new discoveries were taking place in well-known monuments, there was a number of finds made in entirely unexplored, or comparatively unexplored, parts of the city. Such is the case with the excavations for an underground car park in largo Perosi, between the via Giulia and the Tiber, near the ponte Mazzini, mentioned in last year's ‘Notes’. The extensive remains of early Imperial buildings and basalt-paved areas have now been related tentatively to one of the elusive stabula of the circus factions, listed in the wider area of Regio IX in the Regionary Catalogues, and which up to now have moved around the Campus Martius between San Lorenzo in Damaso, the Palazzo Farnese, and the Museo Barracco, depending upon which authority one consults.Footnote ¹⁴ The director of the works, Fedora Filippi of the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Roma, explained to the press that the current remains, dating initially to the Augustan period but with rebuilding phases of the fourth century, form parallel bays built of travertine and opus reticulatum, similar to stables known from military camps and mosaic representations. On the opposite side of the ancient road, closer to the Tiber, was a small balneum with black and white mosaic pavements. The intention is to preserve the remains in a museum area of the finished modern building.Footnote ¹⁵ Another find from an unusual context was a fragmentary white marble statue, measuring 60 cm in height, discovered in a seventeenth-century drain beneath the gardens of the Quirinal palace, where it had been reused as a lintel. Dating to the second or early third century ad, the piece was identified tentatively as a faun, perhaps originally belonging to a Dionysian procession group.Footnote ¹⁶

In the suburbs, extensive remains have been brought to light at the second mile of the Via Tiburtina. In the vast area once occupied by the ATAC bus depot on the north side of the ancient Via Tiburtina, between via della Lega Lombarda and via Arduino, building works have revealed an entire ancient neighbourhood consisting of agricultural and funerary structures. Walls in tufa opus quadratum and reticulate criss-cross the modern building site, which newspaper reports attribute to a large-scale agricultural complex, including a monumental basin measuring 60 m in length perhaps for the production of fertilizer. A necropolis dating to the first–third centuries ad adjoins these remains, with at least one columbarium decorated in mosaic and containing a sarcophagus bearing Christological reliefs. Most interesting of all, a Mithraeum was found in the same area, with opus sectile floor decoration that included a representation of Sol.Footnote ¹⁷ More funerary remains were encountered in works on the tram tracks immediately outside the Porta Ostiensis. Here, just 60 cm beneath the modern road level, an ancient necropolis was found composed of humble surface burials, some marked by amphorae. Twenty skeletons were discovered dating to the third/fourth centuries ad. Due to the excellent condition of the teeth, most were believed to have died at a comparatively young age; one body was buried in a sarcophagus decorated with pastoral scenes (shepherd and flock).Footnote ¹⁸

Monitoring the situation regarding the closure and opening of monuments and museums remains difficult. Over the last few years, an array of hopes, intentions and proposals has been aired in the media, not all of which appear close to completion or even implementation. Past ‘Notes from Rome’ have recounted some of the more ambitious: the opening of the fabled Torlonia Collection in the abandoned Villa Rivaldi, the use of the grottoes beneath the Capitoline Hill as museum space, the display of the Ludi Saeculares inscriptions in the Ludovisi cloister of the Museo delle Terme, and even the construction of a ‘Metro D’ running from Montesacro to EUR, crossing the city centre from piazza di Spagna to Trastevere. This year's wish list includes the restoration and opening to the public of the substructures and Mithraeum of the Baths of Caracalla,Footnote ¹⁹ the institution of a new archaeological zone on the lungotevere Testaccio at the ponte Sublicio,Footnote ²⁰ and the restoration of two interesting tombs: the grandiose monument of Macrinus,Footnote ²¹ to be reconstructed in its original context in a necropolis flanking the Via Flaminia, and a hypogean tomb of the first century bc, discovered in 1992 near the Aqua Claudia at Roma Vecchia, to be displayed at the Museo delle Terme, reburied in a site originally intended for an underground lavatory.Footnote ²²

Scepticism aside, it must be admitted that substantial progress has been made over the last few years in restoring and opening to the public both lesser and better known monuments, especially in the Forum and Palatine: the Curia, Atrium Vestae, Temple of Venus and Rome, Via Nova, Vigna Barberini and Domus Severiana are notable examples. This year's great success story has been the opening after twenty years of the newly-restored Tomb of the Scipios and its surrounding archaeological area. Small groups of visitors, clad in hairnets and safety helmets supplied on entrance, are taken on a tour of the rock-cut tomb itself, its fragmentary façade frescoes now protected by a new timber roof. Casts of inscriptions and sculpture, such as the sarcophagus of L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, have been placed in situ (the originals remain in the Pio-Clementino galleries of the Vatican Museums). Also accessible are an early first-century ad columbarium, built to one side of the tomb following its abandonment, and a complicated group of early third-century brick structures fronting the Via Appia, which contains an apparently unused miniature catacomb of the same date. The monuments were restored by Roma Capitale, under the direction of Rita Volpe.Footnote ²³

Funerary monuments were also restored and opened by the Vatican. The mausoleum of the Marcii in the necropolis beneath Saint Peter's is now visible to those visiting the archaeological area, its Severan frescoes and rare façade mosaic restored to pristine condition.Footnote ²⁴ The hypogeum of the Aurelii, inside the Aurelianic Walls near Porta Maggiore, was reopened to the public briefly, after a lengthy programme of excavation and restoration. The interpretation of the monument's mid-third-century frescoes (pagan, Christian, gnostic, or a mixture of all three?) remains as controversial as ever.Footnote ²⁵ Whilst such questions may be studied at leisure in the library, the experience of entering the underground tomb complex, immersed in the dense early twentieth-century neighbourhood of the Esquiline, cannot be replicated from the perusal of the publications — not least the monumental scale of the chambers: the principal hypogean cubiculum alone, with its impressive inscribed floor mosaic, measures c. 4.5 × 5.5 m.

Another archaeological area that continues to expand and evolve, with new areas becoming accessible to the public swiftly and in an innovative manner, is that beneath the Palazzo Valentini, covering the large area (c. 5,500 square metres) to the northwest of Trajan's Column.Footnote ²⁶ The majority of the excavated area is occupied by two domus, one of which, with a large balneum, was extensively rebuilt in the fourth century. At the end of 2011 a new display featuring digital/video reconstructions and a bilingual audio commentary was installed in the large private bath area, in which are visible freshly restored opus sectile pavements (including one recomposed from the collapsed upper floor). The building's final destruction was attributed to an earthquake in the mid-sixth century. Excavations have commenced also in the much-discussed zone immediately adjoining Trajan's Column. Visitors can now see two of the immense 50-foot granite column shafts that underlie the sixteenth-century palace's foundations, attributed by many to the temple of the deified Trajan and Plotina — whose podium continues to elude archaeologists.

Two exhibitions devoted to antiquities were held this year. For the first time since 1807, when Camillo Borghese exchanged much of its original collection for a fief in Piedmont and a valuable consideration from Napoleon, the Villa Borghese temporarily recovered 60 of those 695 objects from the Louvre for the exhibition ‘I Borghese e l'antico’ (December 2011–April 2012).Footnote ²⁷ An attempt was made to recreate, as far as possible, the original setting of the sculptures in the individual rooms of the Casino, although this was made difficult by the superimposition of the paintings and ancient artworks that had arrived here in the years since 1807. Pieces of particular significance for their associations with ancient topography, as well as the history of the Roman collections, included the Borghese Ares (once in the Ceoli Collection), the Della Porta's Venus Pudica and Orestes and Pylades, the traditio legis sarcophagus from the mausoleum of the Anicii at Old Saint Peter's, the Three Graces and the Centaur carrying Eros (from different sites on the Caelian), and the colossal Marsyas from the Baths of Diocletian.

This year's exhibition in the Curia was ‘Vetri a Roma’, which presented glassware (including mosaics, opus sectile, perfume containers, cinerary urns and other grave-goods) from museums throughout Italy and Germany, ranging in date from the Etruscan period to the fourth century ad.Footnote ²⁸ In addition to the intrinsic interest of the material itself, of particular significance for the archaeology and topography of Rome were exhibits released from the storerooms of the Museo Nazionale Romano and the Antiquarium Comunale, such as the famous port scene glass mosaic from the Quirinal house of Claudius Claudianus, a fine small-format Nilotic mosaic from a house excavated during the construction of the Palazzo delle Esposizioni on the via Nazionale (both from the Antiquarium Comunale), a large selection of glass gems from the Lacus Juturnae, and new material from the excavations of Clementina Panella and Lucia Saguì near the Arch of Titus (earrings, glass bowls, for example).

The last year also has seen the continual addition of new exhibition spaces to older museums. The Villa Giulia collection of Etruscan, Latial and central Italian antiquities has extended into the neighbouring Villa Poniatowsky, a charming sixteenth-century residence with later additions by Giuseppe Valadier.Footnote ²⁹ The museum's Latial antiquities have been united here, leaving additional space for the Etruscan and Faliscan material in the Villa Giulia itself, where the display of the Portonaccio temple terracottas has reached its most extensive state yet, including the ridge statues' large painted bases. The display at the Villa Poniatowsky, open to small groups of the public at set times of the day, is arranged geographically, with material on show from Satricum, Praeneste, Segni, Nemi, Ardea and Gabii. Umbrian material from the San Raffaele tomb is also included.

At the Crypta Balbi Museum a sector devoted to the finds from the ancient complex's Mithraeum has opened.Footnote ³⁰ The material includes a small bull-slaying relief (Mithras's head is gilded), architectural fragments, and an assemblage of second- to fourth-century oil-lamps, one of which bears a Constantinian monogram. At the Palazzo Massimo, meanwhile, the first-floor sculpture galleries have been rearranged.Footnote ³¹ A sector devoted to Dionysian statuary has been set up, and divine and ideal sculpture from the Esquiline and Quirinal horti is displayed together. On show for the first time in decades are the picturesque small relief from the Quirinal, representing a bucolic scene with a statue of Diana in a small temple, and a semi-colossal marble Apollo, reconstituted from fragments discovered in the Tiber in 1891.Footnote ³² At the same time, the display of the frescoes from the Augustan villa of the Farnesina was modified, and visitors can now enter the Black Triclinium, previously visible only from the doorway, where in addition fragments of the coloured mosaic floor have been reintegrated.

The saddest news of the year was that of the death of Lucos Cozza, in June 2011. Rome's last direct link to the school of Lugli (and therefore of Ashby and Lanciani), he was also the last member of the group that published the marble plan, and a dear friend of the British School at Rome from even before the days of John Ward-Perkins (he once gave Sir Ian Richmond a lift around the Castro Pretorio on the back of his Lambretta). His achievements and memory were celebrated with a Giornata di Studi at the British School at Rome in March 2012, attended by family, friends, scholars and students from Rome and further afield, including Amanda Claridge from London, Emilio Rodriguez-Almeida from Avila, and Ronald Ridley from Melbourne.Footnote ³³ His archaeological career was commemorated by Cairoli Fulvio Giuliani at the Pontificia Accademia Romana di Archeologia, the venerable institution whose activity he had sustained so long as a member since 1970. One of the most poignant and apposite memorials was that posted in La Repubblica by his old friends and colleagues Filippo Coarelli, Antonio Giuliano, Adriano La Regina, Mario Torelli and Fausto Zevi: