For some years, the buzzing sound of mechanical digging has been emanating from a green-screen enclosure standing beside Rome’s monumental avenue, the Via dei Fori Imperiali. This is because an excavation site lies entrenched between the broad avenue and the adjacent portion of Caesar’s Forum, which is open to the public as part of an archaeological park.

There, in the south-eastern section of the complex, heavy mechanical excavators and trucks operate alongside archaeologists, conservators, geologists, and radiocarbon specialists, who are committed to figuring out what was going on here in the past. Inside the enclosure, two trenches are cordoned off with plastic fences that proclaim there are ‘lavori in corso’: works in progress.