Nuove indagini presso le terme pubbliche di Forum Sempronii (Fossombrone, PU)

The excavation of the public baths of Forum Sempronii, after the first investigations which took place between 1996 and 1997, was resumed in 2020 with the ambitious project of bringing to light and restoring all the rooms relevant to the building located within the Archaeological Park (approximately 1,200 m²). A destructured context relating to the later phases of use of the area emerged thanks to new research, which made it possible to define the original function of the 9 rooms detected. With the progressive depopulation of the town and the start of processes of ruralization of the site, phenomena placeable starting to at least the 4th century AD, this urban sector was also the subject of intense plundering, in particular of its marbles, until it disappeared under layers of collapse and abandonment. The rooms of the baths were the site of residential areas of which, however, very few traces remain due also to the intense agricultural work, and not far away the spaces of the city were occupied by a necropolis area. The coarse ware pottery recovered in the superficial stratigraphies of the thermal environments, associated with numerous fragments of animal bones, testify to an attendance that continued during the 5th-6th century AD, if not even beyond.