Hello everybody, we are on the palatine today. We are standing in what was the courtyard of 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 hide in the feature of the very early origin of this city. We have been digging in this place for 30 years and we have been able to uncover walls structures, second place dating back to the eighth century BC, which said new light about the history and the origins of the city of Rome. If we want to figure out how the original landscape in this place look 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 form 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 hats have been smashed down and a fortification wall enclosing the Palatine Hill and dividing the Palatine from the rest of the settlement has been 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 have been placed and the first sacred place related to the life of the early city. Jupiter statues, the lattice, investor with the Fire of Rome. Now, let's have a closer look to the logical feature that is 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 has being enclosed by a fortification wall here. We have been able to uncover stretch of this wall on the northern side of the hill related to a gate. This gate in some sense has been ritually founded because a votive assemblage has been 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. If the entrance right here this side here is this limit and this large post-hole 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 voltage assemblage, which were exactly here underneath the limit. Other feature 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 are seeing there was a stretch of the earlier settlement. The earlier hut as being smashed down into new huts, a large one and a smaller one has been placed right inside of the remains of the earlier hut. Remember this is the place where the ancient 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 compose a very large complex housing, a royal house here that we can imagine like this with personal and thatched roofs like this, with a large hole inside here. At least two cut places one here with sacred Earth, 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 this feature are part of a larger phenomenon, because all over a larger area outer 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 Capitol Hill placing bodies underneath that is a huge field, a male and a female body with a child. It looks like once again is a votive offering. There's a new story beginning and there's a second sanction at the beginning of all of this and on the other side on the forum valley, we have the sacred place sacred to a fire god volcanoes and that was the place where the ancient believed that the Council of these kings, the Roman Senate had their meetings. Beneath that, a new smaller square has been paid, where the people are to gather to let the king rein. So why do we think that all this is the sign of a news story? First of all because all these features created this continuity in the layout of the earliest settlement. We had groups of huts that are smashed down to let space for a fortification wall and for new buildings. Second, this new buildings are related to a new political power that came south public sacred places. So this feature are the sign of something related to politics, which is something new in the organization of the product urban settlements. Third, a new system is attached in some sense to the earliest settlement because the forum area and this new political place, the forum here and the meeting of the people and the meeting of 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 it as something new is happening and this something new is happening as a process changing, not just the layout of the earlier settlement but its 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 in new power seat is now evident, this why we think that this new story can be related to the political evolution of Rome and this is why we think that the story can be compared with the memory of the ancient about the birth of Rome.
