The archaeological area

The bishop’s palace stands in an area that is also particularly interesting from an archaeological point of view. In the ‘Contrada Diana’ area, habitation areas, roads, meeting and public areas, thermal structures and defensive apparatuses, as well as a network of canals and a large area of necropolis: isolated tombs, enclosures and family or guild hypogea add up from the Neolithic period. That there were private and public monuments and buildings here with decorations of various kinds, such as peristyles with columns and capitals or rooms with friezes and wall decorations, is suggested by the findings of sculptures and architectural elements that are concentrated in this area and are unmatched in Lipari.

The oldest settlement, in the center of the plain, has been dated to around 4500 B.C., a period when the island-which also records settlements on the rock at the same time-must have been coveted because of the presence of obsidian.

From the end of the 4th century B.C., on the other hand, are the walls built with stone blocks of considerable size. Of the beautiful curtain wall, four fragments with a length of 235 m have been brought to light in the plain.

Another clearly identified element is a wall without a facing that shows extreme sketchiness of construction and is thought to have been built to meet an attack launched on Lipari during the clashes between Octavian and Sextus Pompeius (c. 38 B.C.).

Of the expansion of the Roman city, which also invested the area behind the walls, two insulae remain among the best-preserved wards. Further transformations of the ‘Contrada di Diana’ area are attributed to the 4th century CE; a century in which the occupation of the spaces in front of the walls with the construction of new buildings is evident.

 North of the park, along the driveway to the bishop’s palace, is included a public bath complex with floor mosaics, datable to the Roman imperial age (2nd-3rd cent. AD). This monument was already visible in 1830, as evidenced by some testimonies of distinguished visitors.

Some places of worship, in addition to cemetery areas, are arranged outside the walls. Two masonry structures suggest a suburban sanctuary that would complete toward the north a band of structures related to the sacred and still further south a place of worship documented for the Classical and Hellenistic ages.

In the work of rearrangement of the ground floor of the bishop’s palace, hypogean rooms and a series of archaeological finds were found, which were transferred to the Archaeological Museum of Lipari (pottery, a glimpse of floor mosaic, stone structures). About the definition of these environments there are no particular certainties but, as the findings in the surrounding area suggest, it cannot be excluded that they are structures connected with the vast Greco-Roman cemetery area.