If the first excavation campaign in Torcello dates back to the seventeenth century, in the nineteenth century - especially in the restoration of the monumental complex of Santa Maria Assunta - the archaeological research was intensified on the island. These researches are still going on, providing useful elements to better understand the society of Torcello.

The first excavation conducted and documented on the island of Torcello may be dated to the end of the seventeenth century, when a Venetian doctor, Giulio Malvicini, bought from  the nuns of San Gerolamo a vineyard in the district of Sant' Angelo in Torcello, where during the redevelopment works the foundations of the ancient Monastery of Sant'Angelo in Zampenigo were unearthed, on which he commissioned the building a small chapel. During the nineteenth century a real challenge started to the excavations and to the archaeological surveys on the island, mainly conducted in connection with the restoration of the monumental complex of Santa Maria Assunta.

The center figures of these works were leading personalities  in both the historical overview and the restoration of Venice: Giuseppe Casoni and Giovanni Davide Weber, who conducted in 1832 the excavations at the canal side of the Borgognoni; Cesare Augusto Levi, who conducted several archaeological surveys in the central area of the island, Federico Berchet, who in 1892 conducted the first excavations in the area of the baptistery and the architect,  Domenico Rupolo who opened a series of excavations both inside the Basilica and in the neighboring areas from which came to light the famous tombstone Torcellana which is now in the apse of the cathedral.

The twentieth century began with the last works of Rupolo around the foundations of the bell tower and the work of  Ferdinando Forlati, the proto (chief architect) of the Basilica of San Marco, who was responsible for a series of restorations and excavations from which emerged the foundations of the little church that in accordance with tradition was dedicated to St. Mark..

In 1960 Giampiero Bognetti, recently arrived at the Cini Foundation in Venice, announced that he wanted to conduct some archaeological surveys on the island, in order to clarify some points of  the Venetian history. The intervention was entrusted to a team led by Lech Leciejewiz, of the Institute of History of Material Culture of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who between 1961 and 1962 made two surveys for excavation respectively behind and in front of the basilica and the results, published in 1977, are still today among the most interesting of the early history of archeology of medieval Italian. At the same time the Superintendence, which authorized the excavation of the "Poles",  commissioned another excavation, under the direction of Giulia Fogolari, in the southern part of the island,  where the foundations of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista were unearthed.

In the first half of the 80s the then official of the Archaeological Superintendence of  the Veneto Region,  Michele Tombolani, wanted to carry out a further excavation, according to modern stratigraphic methods, in the area behind the church, a few meters away from the one conducted in 1961, in order to verify their connections. Just ten years after this intervention a new season of excavations started, begun by Maurizia De Min with the restoration of the baptistery and the fourth nave of the Basilica.

Furthermore, in 1993 a number of new archaeological interventions began coordinated by the Archaeological Superintendence of Veneto, located first in the area around the square, intensified from 1995 to 2008 by the archaeeological excavations led by Luigi Fozzati and Marco Bortoletto and afterwards expanded through a series of excavation campaigns, both terrestrial and underwater, on most of the island that, in the meantime, had been subjected to massive maintenance works by the Municipality and the Water Authority, concluded in the spring of 2012.