Satricum (modern Le Ferriere), an ancient town of Latium vetus, lay on the right bank of the Astura river some 60 kilometres (37 miles) SE of Rome in a low-lying region south of the Alban Hills, at the NW border of the Pontine Marshes.

[7] Antonio Nibby[8] mistakenly identified ancient Satricum with the low hill at Borgo Montello, then known as the Tenuta di Conca, surrounded by tufa cliffs, 1.5 km ESE of present-day Le Ferriere, on which were still scanty remains of walling in rectangular blocks of the same material.

In 1896, the hill above Le Ferriere yielded remains of an archaic and early Classical sanctuary ascribed to Mater Matuta, during excavations begun under the direction of Prof. H. Graillot of the University of Bordeaux, member of the École française de Rome.

After some cursory investigations during the 1950s, the site of Satricum was brought to light again in 1977, as a result of a concerted effort by the Italian authorities to rescue the antiquities in the Roman campagna that were acutely threatened by large-scale urbanisation and agricultural reform.

[10] As a result, the Royal Dutch Institute at Rome was invited by the Comitato per l'Archeologia laziale to participate in a rescue project and to ascertain the state of preservation of the site.

This concerned, first of all, activities by the Royal Dutch Institute at Rome (C. M. Stibbe),[12] later joined by the Universities of Groningen (prof. M. Kleibrink) and Nijmegen (prof. J. de Waele).

Several inscriptions bearing the name of Mater Matuta have now made undisputed the identification of the city on and around the acropolis directly to the south of today's Le Ferriere with ancient Satricum.

Metrological analyses by Prof. J. de Waele, published in 1981[13] convincingly demonstrated a succession of three building phases dated from the late 7th to the early 5th century BC.

The three temples succeeding one another are characterized by Etrusco-Ionian, Campanian, and central-Italic traditions, respectively, in material, technology, and artistic background, evidencing the character of Satricum as a true crossroads of regionally competing, or successive, cultures.

To the NE, a network of large roads, amongst which a "Sacra Via", in combination with a dense urban build-up have been traced, documenting various phases from the 6th to 4th century BC.

Thus the precise details are now known of the circumstances that led to the first excavation campaign by Graillot, the Italian government's intervention, and the subsequent neglect of the Satricum objects in the Villa Giulia.

Preliminary reports have been appearing frequently since 1978 in the scholarly periodicals Archeologia Laziale, Bulletin Vereniging Antieke Beschaving, Mededelingen van het Nederlands Instituut te Rome and Lazio & Sabina.