The Rome 1 Regional Research Campus is located in the Sabine countryside, overlooks the Tiber Valley, and covers nearly 90 hectares. More than half of this area is free of buildings and roads, leaving room for natural environments of different kinds such as meadows, cultivated fields, wooded areas and freshwater reservoirs. For this reason, both plants and animals are common on the campus. Some groups have been the subject of dedicated projects and studies. Regarding vegetation, several studies have been carried out, for example, “l’orto dei semplici” (dedicated to aromatic plants) and “il progetto Ossigeno”, a massive shrub and tree planting intervention. In the case of the fauna, regular bird censuses have been conducted, the results of which are published in the first issue of the Quaderni naturalistici. There are also many species belonging to the other vertebrate classes, insects and spiders, which would deserve in-depth monitoring.

.Within the Rome 1 Regional Research Campus, at an altitude of 51 m.a.s.l., beside the Via Salaria and overlooking the Tiber River, lies the necropolis of Colle del Forno, the outermost core of the burial ground of the site of ancient Eretum (today Casa Cotta, in the municipality of Montelibretti). Eretum is one of the most important cities in the region whose earliest settlements date back to the seventh century B.C.

Although one of the graves had already been excavated in 1934, the discovery of the necropolis occurred in December 1970 during work on the infrastructure of the Campus. A series of excavation campaigns begun in 1971 by the Center for the Study of Etruscan-Italic Archaeology (later merged into the present ISPC) unearthed 23 chamber tombs whose use ranges from the late 7th to early 3rd century B.C.

During the years 1980-2000, the hill was investigated using geophysical methods by the Institute for Applied Technologies in Cultural Heritage (also merged into the ISPC), and between 2003 and 2008 new excavations led to the discovery of 16 more tombs.