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The so called Throne Hall.

by Egenia Salza Prina Ricotti

– The so called “Sala del Trono” got its name by the area people who took it to be a hall with columns around and a large exedra in which, n a podium stood Hadrian’s throne, There, for them, he did awful things among which condemn and kill Sofonisba (local sainte) and all her children. We don’t know if Sainte Sofonisba ever existed or if she had all these children; we don’t know how and were she died, but of something we are sure: Hadrian had nothing to do with her killing and this”Sala del Trono” is not a ”Sala del Trono because it is a peristyle garden (in a probe trench we found its flower beds and even a planting pot). This garden cutting the “Caserma dei Vigili” courtyard and blocking its communication with the kitchen’s area was made on Hadrian’s return from his first travel around his empire. Probably he wanted to show in a beautiful frame some sculpture he had brought back with him from Greece or from the Middle East. The finding there of fragments of red marble (a faun’s tail and a large piece of a goat skin) make it possible to hypotise that thre had been a third faun now completely destroyed in the nearby kilns.