6 Stratigraphy

You find yourselves inside the acropolis hill now. After the 1997 earthquake, the whole Saint Lawrence complex underwent restoration so as to strengthen it; and during those works, extremely interesting archaeological finds surfaced. The construction side therefore turned into an archaeological area by emptying the room you are in, which had remained buried until then.

Please see the skylight corresponding to the glass window you identified as a "polestar" in the main cloister. That means that you have come back to your starting point, though a level below.

Among the most significant finds, surely the wall stratigraphy now in front of you stands out. It gives tangible evidence about the spiritual research the Perugia people kept carrying on on this sacred hill. The wall consists of three levels:

– The lower section corresponds to the foundations of the most ancient temple they built on the acropolis, namely in the seventh century B.C. It was possible to date this layer thanks to a "foundation pit" where gifts to the godhead had been ritually left. Among them some precious bucchero jars have been found, on which one Etruscan word had been carved: Uni.

Uni was a goddess in the Etruscan pantheon, then adopted and adapted by the Romans, who called her Iuno / Juno. Probably this temple was dedicated to her. As a matter of fact, according to a Roman historian and politician, Lucius Cassius Dio, after the fire caused by the war of Perugia, Augustus stole a wonderful sculpture of Juno from the acropolis. We can infer that the temple whence the statue was smuggled was precisely the one we see here.

– Upon the first layer, please notice a second wall fragment. It also corresponds to the foundations of a later religious building, dating back to the second century B.C. So, from a chronological viewpoint, it should be connected with the terracing of the hill. And, we should imagine a majestic structure rising from it, something monumental and beautiful that overlooked the town.

The materials that have been found in the acropolis terracing (precisely in the area you are in) prove to be quite important insofar as they help us envision the look of those sacred buildings. For example, a fine matrix to be dated about 490 B.C., which shows Hercules and a golden-horned doe sacred to Artemis; that was Hercules' third labor. The presence of Hercules appears to be meaningful if the temple, as everything makes us think, was dedicated to the Etruscan goddess Uni, then the Roman Juno. Among the oldest pottery (fourth/third century B.C.), moreover, three sculpted tiles shaped as satyrs' heads are worth noticing. Two of them are quite fragmentary, but the colors of the third have been exceptionally well preserved.

Another set of architecture-connected pottery includes some fifty fragments, most of which have been found in Via delle Cantine (the Medieval alley that run before the Etruscan terracing wall, just beyond the current emergency door). In brief, most pottery comes from the northern area and the feet of the powerful substructure wall of the second century B.C. It seems reasonable to refer these clay works of the second/first century B.C. to the last phase of existence of buildings that then vanished outside the substructure wall. The fact that monuments of different sizes were there can be conjectured from the sizes of the different elements. Among such finds, see especially some terracottas representing the Potnia theron (Lady of Animals); and a piece of molding decorated with peltas and pillars, whose dripstone is shaped like a lion's head.

– The upper layer belongs to the foundation walls of the 11th - 12th century Cathedral, that is the old one, that would later be considered too dark and replaced with the monumental building we admire nowadays. Therefore, this area also includes the foundations of the current cathedral: precisely the big brick arches above your heads.

It is really fascinating to think that in this spot in Perugia, starting from the seventh century B.C. all the way up to nowadays, people have been gathering in search of the Divine. This place tells us a story of faith and religion that left many traces upon one another, so we become eyewitnesses of changes that developed through whole millennia.