The Excubitorium was the guard brigade of ancient Rome. The most known is that of Trastevere, located 8 meters below the street level today and was brought to light in 1865-1866, during one of the many nineteenth-century excavations, undertaken for the recovery of works of art and that he had as reference an emergent ancient wall in the garden of a private house on the Piazza Monte di Fiore, facing the piazza of St. Grisogono, both of which disappeared in the most recent urban structure of the district.
Since the early stages of the excavation, it soon became clear the destination environments brought to light based on the large number of graffiti on the walls, where it was repeatedly cited the Cohort VII Brigade.
In particular, the building was identified as a excubitorium or guardhouse, built towards the end of the second century AD within a private house, bought or rented by the public.
The good state of preservation of the monument and the extraordinary documentary value of graffiti stimulated the interest of scholars, however, insufficient to prevent a gradual abandonment of the area, with great injury to the preservation of the building structures and especially of their decorations.
Only in 1966, one hundred years after the discovery, you are given a reasonable accommodation under the cover of the monument.
The monument consists of a large hall with a central hexagonal shaped tub concave sides. In front of it, on the south wall, an elegant arched door, which the lararium, a sort of chapel of the tutelary genius of the brigade, the Genius excubitorii remembered by graffiti now disappeared.
In the western room with the floor earthenware interrupted in the middle by a manhole cover we wanted to see a bathroom, while uncertainty remains the destination of the two adjacent rooms communicating with each other on the opposite side.
On the north a narrow ambulatory and a room with a dolium basement, container once used to store grain, pulses, oil, etc..