Hello everybody. We are on the Palatine today. We're standing in what was the courtyard of a huge building surrounded by rooms with pillars and water basins. This was a market created at the end of the first century AD, along the Sacred Way, one of the most important streets in the city of Rome. The original landscape was very different from the one we see today. This huge building is standing on a very thick layer of archaeological remains, hidden in the feature of the very early origin of the city. We have been digging in this place for 30 years, and we've been able to uncover walls, structures, sacred places dating back to the eighth century BC, which shed new light on the history and the origins of the city of Rome. If we want to figure out how the original landscape in this place looked like, we have to know that we are standing on the edge of a valley running down there with the stream inside it, flowing down to the Forum valley. This valley was in-between the Palatine Hill on that side, and another hill behind there, which is now no more visible. The Velia Hill, as we have seen along this area, we had the scattered groups of huts, which were the evidence of the earliest settlement of the Iron Age. At the middle of the eighth century BC, all these groups of huts were smashed down, and a fortification wall enclosing the Palatine Hill and dividing the Palatine from the rest of the settlement was built running like this. Here was a street climbing up the hill, and crossing the fortification wall through a gate, which was standing right there. Outside the line of this wall, was created a new area where the king's house would have been placed, and the first secret place related to the life of the early city. Jupiter Stator, the largest investor with the Fire of Rome. Now, let's have a closer look at the archaeological feature that's been uncovered on the Palatine in this part of the proto-urban settlement. Between 775 and 750, the landscape of the Iron Age face changed. First of all, the Palatine was enclosed by a fortification wall here. We've been able to uncover a stretch of this wall on the northern side of the hill related to a gate. This gate, in some sense, was ritually founded because a votive assemblage was buried underneath the threshold of this gate. This is the foundation trench with larger stones inside, and maybe sacred stones related to the magical power of assuring a limit. This is the foundation of the wall with the largest stones emerging from the rest as smaller stones here, as you can see also here in this section. This is a stretch, again of the wall with the bulwark here, and with the entrance right here on this side. Here is this limit in this large post hall, is this one large inside here. This is how we can imagine the standing gate with wooden frames. The threshold, the largest stones in the foundations, trench, the votive assemblage, which were exactly here underneath the limit, and other features like this large post holes supporting these posts and cutting through one of the largest stones, as you can see. At the same time, on the opposite side of the hill here, where we see there was a stretch of the earliest settlement. The earlier hut has been smashed down into two new huts, a large one and the smaller one had been placed right inside the remains of the earlier hut. Remember, this is the place where the ancients thought that Romulus had celebrated a part of the foundation right of the city. In front of these two huts, we have one small pit here and an altar cut in the bedroom in this place. Outside the line of this wall, something new happens again. New buildings are created at this very moment and this building composes a very large complex housing. A royal house here, that we can imagine like this with post holes and thatched roofs like this with a large hole inside here. At least two cult places, one here with the sacred half created here from the middle of the eighth century until the end of the sixth century BC. The hut here, like this one possibly related to the sacred place of Vesta. Vesta was a very important goddess because she was the guardian of the sacred fire, assuring the continuity of the life of the city. So having Vesta placed here means having Rome born. More than this we see from an archaeological point of view that these features are part of a larger phenomenon. Because all over a larger area, out of the Palatine, again, new features appear, such as the forum. The forum square is created for the first time, filling up this valley here between the Palatine and the Capitoline Hill, placing bodies underneath this huge fill, a male and a female body with a child. It looks like, once again, it's a votive offering. There's a new story beginning, and there's a sacred sanction at the beginning of all of this. On the other side of the forum Valley, we have the sacred blaze, sacred to a fire god, Vulcan. That was the place where the ancients believed that the Council of these kings, the Roman Senate, had their meetings. Beneath that, a new smaller square has been paved where the people together to let the king reign. So why do we think that all this is the sign of a new story? First of all, because all these features created discontinuity in the layout of the earliest settlement. We had groups of huts that are smashed down to allow space for a fortification wall and venue buildings. Second, these new buildings are related to a new political power, the king's house, public sacred places. So these features are the sign of something related to politics, which is something new in the organization of the Proto-urban settlements. Third, a new system is attached in some sense to the earlier settlement because the forum area and this new political place. The Forum here and the meeting of the people, and the meeting of the Senate are placed right on the border of the earlier settlement, but not inside. Because this new political place has to be taken out of the possible control of the noble families inside the settlement. So what we see from an archaeological point of view is that something new is happening, and this something new is happening as a process, changing. Not just the layout of the earliest settlement, but it's core nature because central places, not in topographical terms, as you see, this is not the center of the settlement, but in political terms, because a new power seat is now evident. This is why we think that this new story can be related to the political evolution of Rome. This is why we think that this story can be compared with the memory of the ancients about the birth of Rome.
