Villa Romana del Casale

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General View

Plan

Famous "bikini girls" mosaic showing women exercising

"bikini girl" mosaic

Villa Romana del Casale is located about 5km outside the town of Piazza Armerina. It is the richest, largest and most complex collection of late Roman mosaics in the world. The Villa Romana del Casale, famous for its mosaics, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Villa Romana del Casale was constructed on the remains of an older villa in the first quarter of the fourth century, probably as the centre of a huge latifundium covering the entire surrounding area. How long the villa kept this role is not known, maybe for less that 150 years, but the complex remained inhabited and a village grew around it, named Platia, derived from palatium. It was damaged, maybe destroyed during the domination of the Vandals and the Visigoths, but the buildings remained in use, at least in part, during the Byzantine and Arab period. The site was finally abandoned for good when a landslide covered the villa in the 12th century CE, and remaining inhabitants moved to the current location of Piazza Armerina.

The existence of the villa was almost entirely forgotten (some of the tallest parts have always been above ground) and the area used for cultivation. Pieces of mosaics and some columns were found early in the 19th century, and some excavations were carried out later in that century, but the first serious excavations were performed by Paolo Orsi in 1929, and later by Giuseppe Cultrera in 1935-39. The latest major excavations were in the period 1950-60 by Gino Vinicio Gentile after which the current cover was build. A few very localised excavations have been performed in the 1970s by Andrea Carandini.

In late antiquity most of the Sicilian hinterland was partitioned into huge agricultural estates called "latifundia" (sing. "latifundium"). The size of the villa and the amount and quality of its artwork indicate that it was the centre of such a latifundium, whose owner was probably a member of senatorial class if not of the imperial family itself, i.e., the absolute upper class of the Roman Empire.

The villa evidently served several purposes. It contained some rooms that were clearly residential, others that certainly had official purposes, and a number of rooms of as yet unknown intended use, though they were definitely not built for commercial or production reasons. The villa would probably have been the permanent or semi-permanent residence of the owner; it would have been where the owner, in his role as patron, received his local clients; and it would have functioned as the administrative centre of the latifundium.

Currently, only the manorial portions of the complex have been excavated. The ancillary structures -- housing for the slaves, workshops, stables, etc. -- have not yet been located.

The villa was a single-story building, centred on the peristyle, around which almost all the main public and private rooms were organised. Entrance to the peristyle is via the atrium from the W., with the thermal baths to the NW.; service rooms and probably guest rooms to the N.; private apartments and a huge basilica to the E.; and rooms of unknown purpose to the S. Somewhat detached, almost as an afterthought, is the separate area to the S. containing the elliptical peristyle, service rooms, and a huge triclinium.

[edit] The Latifundium and the Villa

Thermal baths heating system

The overall plan of the villa was dictated by several factors: older constructions on the site, the slight slope on which it is built, and the passage of the sun and the prevailing winds. The higher ground to the east is occupied by the Great Basilica, the private apartments, and the Corridor of the Great Hunt, the middle ground by the Peristyle, guest rooms, the entrance area, the Elliptical Peristyle, and the triclinium, while the lower ground to the west is dedicated to the thermal baths.

The whole complex is somewhat unusual, as it is organised along three major axes. The primary axis is the (slightly bent) line that passes from the atrium, tablinum, peristyle and the great basilica (coinciding with the path visitors would follow), while the thermal baths and the elliptical peristyle with the triclinium are centred on separate axes. In spite of the different orientations of the various parts of the villa they all form a single structure, built simultaneously. There is no indication that the villa was constructed in several stages.

Little is known about the earlier villa, but it appears to have been just a large country residence, probably built around the beginning of the second century.

[edit] Bibliography

Petra Baum-vom Felde, Zur dionysischen Präsenz in Mosaikbildern der spätrömischen Villa bei Piazza Armerina und zu einem einheitlichen, übergeordneten Konzeptions gedanken, in: Dialogues d'Histoire Ancienne 32/1, 2006, S. 27 - 52.
Petra Baum-vom Felde, Zur Interpretation eines geometrisch-figürlichen Mosaikfußbodens der spätrömischen Villa bei Piazza Armeirna, In: Dialogues d'Histoire Ancienne 31/2, 2005, S. 67 - 105.
Petra C. Baum-vom Felde, Die geometrischen Mosaiken der Villa bei Piazza Armerina, Hamburg 2003, ISBN 3-8300-0940-2
Brigit Carnabuci: Sizilien – Kunstreiseführer, DuMont Buchverlag, Köln 1998, ISBN 3-7701-4385-X.
R. J. A. Wilson: Piazza Armerina, Granada Verlag: London 1983, ISBN 0-246-11396-0.
A. Carandini - A. Ricci - M. de Vos, Filosofiana, The villa of Piazza Armerina. The image of a Roman aristocrat at the time of Constantine, Palermo 1982.
S. Settis, "Per l'interpretazione di Piazza Armerina", in Mélanges de l'Ecole Française de Rome. Antiquité 87, 1975, 2, pp. 873-994.