8 Foundation Pillars

This room lies exactly below our starting point: we are just under the Room of the Insula. This also was the starting point for the most recent archaeological campaigns, the ones that brought to light all the elements you saw inside the acropolis. During the post-1997-earthquake restoration works these two travertine pillars resurfaced too. The mortar that fills the connections between the stones being a modern addition, however: they in fact belong to the same epoch as the containment spurs, and like the spurs, they were made in drystone. In spite of later manipulations, these structures have remained in their original place. The difference between their levels shows how much the soil slanted in this area of the hill, that is the same slope as can be measured around the containment spurs.

So, these two pillars also were underground, and must be considered bottom-level props. Like the spurs, they surely made the soil more compact and safer, but probably to a more specific end, i.e. as a foundation for the access structure to the monumental area on the acropolis. Such structure, letting people climb up to the temples, should therefore have existed just above your heads.