Area 5 stretches from the Lateran Cathedral (area 1) to Santa Croce (area 3) and is occupied by roads and by the open spaces of the Giardini di Via Carlo Felice. It is limited to the South by the Aurelian Walls (area 9) and to the North by Rome's Umbertine urban development. 

Binding two of the main research areas together, area 5 is key in our understanding of the transformations that occurred in the Eastern Caelian from the first to the eight centuries, how the imperial and religious pole of Santa Croce dialogued with the military, later religious and papal quarter of the Lateran and how the area worked as a transition space between the city and its suburbium before and after the construction of the Aurelian Walls.   

Open road and gardened surfaces allow for an intense programme of ERT and multi-channel GPR analysis, together with borehole analysis, that will hopefully cast a new light on this otherwise little known area of great relevance in our understanding of the pattern of transformation occurring in this portion of the city in Antiquity and during the Early Middle Ages.

Thea Ravasi