In Laocoön and His Sons, how is the Findspot discussed?
The location where the buried statue was found in 1506 was always known to be "in the vineyard of Felice De Fredis" on the Oppian Hill (the southern spur of the Esquiline Hill), as noted in the document recording the sale of the group to the Pope.  But over time, knowledge of the site's precise location was lost, beyond "vague" statements such as Sangallo's "near Santa Maria Maggiore" (see above) or it being "near the site of the Domus Aurea" (the palace of the Emperor Nero); in modern terms near the Colosseum.  An inscribed plaque of 1529 in the church of Santa Maria in Aracoeli records the burial of De Fredis and his son there, covering his finding of the group but giving no occupation. Research published in 2010 has recovered two documents in the municipal archives (badly indexed, and so missed by earlier researchers), which have established a much more precise location for the find: slightly to the east of the southern end of the Sette Sale, the ruined cistern for the successive imperial baths at the base of the hill by the Colosseum.The first document records De Fredis' purchase of a vineyard of about 1.5 hectares from a convent for 135 ducats on 14 November 1504, exactly 14 months before the finding of the statue.  The second document, from 1527, makes it clear that there is now a house on the property, and clarifies the location; by then De Fredis was dead and his widow rented out the house. The house appears on a map of 1748, and still survives as a substantial building of three storeys, as of 2014 in the courtyard of a convent.  The area remained mainly agricultural until the 19th century, but is now entirely built up. It is speculated that De Fredis began building the house soon after his purchase, and as the group was reported to have been found some four metres below ground, at a depth unlikely to be reached by normal vineyard-digging operations, it seems likely that it was discovered when digging the foundations for the house, or possibly a well for it.The findspot was inside and very close to the Servian Wall, which was still maintained in the 1st century AD (possibly converted to an aqueduct), though no longer the city boundary, as building had spread well beyond it.  The spot was within the Gardens of Maecenas, founded by Gaius Maecenas the ally of Augustus and patron of the arts.  He bequeathed the gardens to Augustus in 8 BC, and Tiberius lived there after he returned to Rome as heir to Augustus in 2 AD.  Pliny said the Laocoön was in his time at the palace of Titus (qui est in Titi imperatoris domo), then heir to his father Vespasian, but the location of Titus's residence remains unknown; the imperial estate of the Gardens of Maecenas may be a plausible candidate.  If the Laocoön group was already in the location of the later findspot by the time Pliny saw it, it might have arrived there under Maecenas or any of the emperors.  The extent of the grounds of Nero's Domus Aurea is now unclear, but they do not appear to have extended so far north or east, though the newly rediscovered findspot-location is not very far beyond them.
ducat aqueduct Tiberius Vespasian Emperor Nero Gardens of Maecenas Sette Sale Laocoön Santa Maria in Aracoeli Esquiline Hill hectare Oppian Hill Domus Aurea Gaius Maecenas cistern Colosseum Titus Nero Augustus Servian Wall