Trebula Suffenas: discovery, excavation, restoration. The narrative of the ruins

Valeria Montanari

The archaeological site of Trebula Suffenas is located east of Tivoli (province of Rome), in the Tiburtina area along the route of the ancient Via Empolitana, in an important transit point between the Tiber valley and the central Apennines.

A settlement of equitable origin, it was conquered by the Romans around 203 BC. and became the administrative center of a rather vast territory that extended up to the Sublacense valley. The area was still inhabited in the early Middle Ages. Several traces of late structures made with excavated materials are evident. Instead, it fell into complete abandonment at least from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; historical sources only recall the ruins of the Abbey of San Giovanni built onthe structures of the ancient town centre. Its rediscovery is due to a recent archaeological excavation campaign.

At the end of the 1940s the excavation works began; at first the remains, although very extensive, were identified with a large villa. Only in the following decade, after further epigraphic discoveries and more in-depth studies, was the archaeological site identified with the ancient city remembered by Marziale (Liber Quintus, LXXXI) of Trebula Suffenas.

The site is currently divided into two parts by a road route, which appears to follow an ancient transhumance route. Most of the archaeological remains are located in a private garden area and their restoration appears rather questionable, even if it dates back to the 1950s. The resurfaced ruins have been largely reintegrated and assembled and their understanding seems rather compromised.

The other part, however, under the control of a cultural association, is still waiting for a correct presentation.

Only the search for a dialogue between the two different realities, through a conscious restoration action, will be able to aspire to a unified narrative of the archaeological site, of its transformation process and of the relationship with the landscape context.