From this date that the city began to perform a strategic function as a border town between Umbria, the Ager Faliscus and the Sabina and especially following the construction in 220 BC of the Via Flaminia.

[4] A new unwalled city was built about 2 km south of and below the present town probably around this time in order to be closer to the curve of the Tiber and the Via Flaminia, which crossed the river here to enter Umbria.

The beauties of its surroundings made it a desirable place for patricians to holiday: Titus Annius Milo, a friend of Cicero and a leading politician in the mid-1st century BC, had a villa there.

He was accused of killing Clodius (in 52 BC) after transporting weapons across the Tiber to his villa in Ocriculum; Pompea Celerina, the very wealthy mother-in-law of Pliny the Younger, also had estates there at the end of the 1st century AD.

[10] The massive baths buildings include a great "octagonal room’" in which the spectacular mosaic pavement was found, now in the Sala della Rotonda, Museo Pio-Clementino.

In front of the cavea was the scaenae frons adorned with precious coloured marbles and with statues and decorations including the gigantic Muses now preserved in the Vatican museums.

In the city centre next to the theatre is a massive and unique building known as the "Great Substructures" consisting of twelve vaulted rooms on two levels which supported a terrace high above most of the town.

Several monumental tombs unusually stand within the city in the valley near the via Flaminia, one of which is of a large drum form next to a public well and seats and belonged to Lucius Cominus Tuscus, son of Caius, of the Arnensis tribe.