Un mausoleo e un balneum lungo la via Flaminia. Narni, Case Salietto 1993-94

This excavation was carried out by our Department (Daniele Manacorda, Emanuele Papi and myself) in collaboration with the Soprintendenza of Umbria. Our intervention was prompted by the discovery of ancient structures during the excavation of a trench in a private land. The site lay along the Via Flaminia, 5 km past Narni, in the direction of Terni. There were two different structures, a mausoleum and a balneum, 26 meters distant from each other. Both were robbed of their standing structures and of their decorative elements, perhaps during the medieval period. Fromt he mausoleum there remained only a row of travertine blocks and the interior concrete core. This formed the basement of a tomb "a edicola" or "ad altare" built between the 1st century BC and the 1st AD belonging to a prominent family who probably owned a fundus in the surrounding area. The balneum was built between the end of the 3rd and the beginning of the 4th century AD, and it was probably connected with the cursus publicus. The structure was built after about a century of abandonment atop an older building dating to the second half of the Ist-2nd century AD and perhaps already related to the road and to the provision of services for travellers. The plan of the balneum was very simple with only three rooms arranged in angular succession (row angular type): an apodyterium/frigidarium, a tepidarium (probably also used as apodyterium and unctorium) and a caldarium with a small solium. In the balneum all the walls, the marble revetments and most of the bricks that formed the hypocausts of the heated rooms had been removed. The mosaic pavements, however, were still in situ. The frigidarium was paved with a white tessellatum decorated by a marine scene in the centre, while the second room had a simple white-rosy mosaic. In the 5th century the area of the mausoleum and of the balneum was reused as a cemetery with "Cappuccina" tombs.