The archaeological site named Santa Maria, due to the presence until half a century ago of a church dedicated to Our Lady of Itria, is part of an ancient urban agglomeration that also includes the district of St. Peter’s Cathedral and dwellings around the Town Hall. During construction work on a new wing of the parish oratory on Garibaldi Street in May 2005, a particular artifact still intact came to light, which was later identified as a thermal bath from the Imperial Roman period (1st-3rd centuries AD). A tangible sign that this site was the site of an urban agglomeration is this very thermal pool, which was part of a larger thermal complex within a villa owned by a wealthy and refined family. Confirming this, in fact, in the adjacent courtyard of a private house one can clearly see at ground level the outlines of two more baths that constitute the completion of what was the classic trio of calidarium, tepidarium and frigidarium typical of bathing rooms among the Romans. Life at the site of Santa Maria is present as early as the Nuragic period and presumably continued uninterrupted throughout the Punic period and continued during the Roman Republican and Imperial periods, eventually giving rise to the vast agglomeration of habitation that would give rise, perhaps in the early Middle Ages, to the formation of the urban center of Terralba. The Selas Cultural Association of Terralba, which has long worked to enhance the historical-archaeological heritage of the area, adopted this monument and took care to protect its integrity. He secured the masonry structures to which the tank rests and landscaped the area surrounding it.
