  We shall here propose a class of relativistic theories of gravitation, based
on a foundational paper of Ehlers Pirani and Schild (EPS).All "extended
theories of gravitation" (also known as f(R) theories) in Palatini formalism
are shown to belong to this class. In a forthcoming paper we shall show that
this class of theories contains other more general examples. EPS framework
helps in the interpretation and solution of these models that however have
exotic behaviours even compared to f(R) theories.
