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The paper presents the results of a core drilling campaign carried out in the eastern part of the Temple of Venus and Rome. The investigations, promoted as part of the Velia Project of the Department of Science of Antiquities, are framed within a complex topographic and orographic system of the ancient city, largely cancelled by an uninterrupted succession of urban interventions (from ancient times to contemporary era), whose preliminary reading was fundamental for the analysis of the results of the drilling. These highlighted a succession of interventions, which began with a levelling activity along the north‑south (larger) and west‑east (less important) directions that erased the archaeological stratification prior to the imperial age, period to which almost all the materials found in the perforations seem to date. The sequence, in the lower part of the deposit (S01, S02, S03, S05, S07), of elements attributable to foundations and structures agrees with the heights of the nearby Nero arcaded street, also leads to assigning intervention to the urban redevelopment following the fire of 64 AD. The results of the core samples would therefore seem to allow us to hypothesize the shape and extent of this intervention, on which the Hadrianic temple was later built transforming this part of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "Velia Project" concerns a significant district of the center of ancient Rome, whose knowledge is deeply affected by the numerous and radical transformations that have characterized its history, up to the contemporary age. The research, started in the autumn 2018, focuses on the areas of the Temple of Venus and Rome (geological prospecting) and the Basilica of Constantine (archaeological excavation) in order to contribute to the definition of the orographic form of the ancient Velia hill and to clarify the historical phases (neronian, flavian, severian) of the urban sector along the northern edge of the via Sacra, definitively transformed by Maxentius. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]