Brindisi. Casa del Turista

The excavations conducted in the years 1999, 2000 and 2011 in the courtyard of the complex of the Casa del Turista, a building that overlooks the waterfront of the inner harbour of the town of Brindisi, made it possible to reconstruct the sequence of use in the complex that, because of its strategic location, had an important historical role in the town from the Roman period to the present day. The oldest phase, from the Roman period, is documented by structures of the imperial period, when it was probably a commercial building. The destruction of the building, documented by layers of collapse, is dated between the third and fourth centuries AD. Between the fifth and seventh centuries AD, on leveling layers, spaces for productive activities such as metalworking, were created. The medieval occupation of the site is documented by structures, layers and ceramics dating from the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries. In this period are found structures of a church and a cemetery area. Until the fourteenth century the history of the site and the church itself is related to the properties and the influence of the monastic order of the Knights Templar.