The excavation campaigns carried out under the parish church of Sant'Eulalia starting in 1990 have brought to light a multilayered archaeological site of great interest. The importance of the findings has allowed a fundamental deepening of knowledge on the evolution of the urban layout of this sector of the ancient city before the medieval layout of the Marina district and the construction of the church.
The oldest phases of life of the site are evidenced by the presence of an open-air quarry of limestone blocks, which remained in use until, in the same area, a small sacred building was built, which returned finds and coins from the 3rd century BC to the 4th century AD. Of this sanctuary, demolished already in Roman times and hidden under new buildings, a podium remains visible in which a deep well opens up for the collection of offerings. The testimonies of the Roman era are the most fascinating and impressive and allow you to explore a large urban sector of the city, with infrastructures and buildings from various periods. The excavation made visible a long stretch of paved road that proceeds in the direction of the port area; the current configuration of the road, equipped with a sewer pipe at the center, can be traced back to late imperial interventions (4th century AD). On the side of the road, a large building complex has emerged for homes and craft activities; of this portion of the village, whose life phases date back to between the 4th and 7th centuries AD, you can see sections of the perimeter walls, the entrances with stone thresholds and a latrine connected to the sewer pipe and built along the path of a staircase that led to the upper floors. The excavation also revealed an impressive colonnaded porch, highlighted for a length of more than 24 meters; presumably built in the 4th century and extensively modified in the 5th century, the porch area, in which the mouth of a deep tank opens, shows architectural details of great elegance, with a space paved with limestone blocks and marble fragments. As evidenced by archaeological evidence, starting from the 8th century onwards, the area was abandoned and covered with thick layers of earth, which concealed the underlying buildings and created a small relief on which, in the 14th century, the church of Sant'Eulalia was built. The construction of the sacred building and the subsequent expansions it underwent over the centuries have also left an obvious trace within the archaeological site: in particular, we remember the discovery, under the central nave and the side chapels, of some funerary crypts, which have returned a large number of burials and finds of historical and anthropological interest, which constitute an important piece for the knowledge of the social and economic conditions of the population of the neighborhood in the centuries between XVIII and XIX.

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