We are in Piazza Armerina in central eastern Sicily staying with a lovely lady named Guilia, who has two B&Bs underneath her beautiful house and garden Apartment Sant'Andrea.
Giulia cooked us a fabulous Sicilian meal on our second night - five courses that even I couldn't finish with a superlative bottle of wine. She also helped me out with antibiotics from the chemist for my tooth infection, for which I was and remain, extremely grateful. Guilia and Paul hit it off straight away.
We are here to visit Villa Romana del Casale. It contains the richest, largest and most complex collection of Roman mosaics in the world and has been designated one of 49 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy.
One of the original entrance gates.
"The villa was constructed on the remains of an older villa in the first quarter of the 4th century AD, probably as the center of a huge agricultural estate covering the surrounding area and supplying Rome with grain and meat. "
"How long the villa had this role is not known, maybe for fewer than 150 years. The complex remained inhabited and a village grew around it. The villa was damaged and perhaps destroyed during the domination of Vandals and the Visigoths. However the outbuildings remained in use, at least in part during the Byzantine and Arab periods."
The Roman baths, shown in the two photos above and the two below, are extensive and remained in use for a long period. Archeologists built a plastic roof over the whole villa complex in 1960. Not only are they needing to keep the floors and walls shaded from the sun and protected from the weather, but those pesky swallows and pigeons cause major problems if they get into the wall spaces.
"The site was abandoned in the 12th century AD after a landslide buried the villa and its village. Survivors moved to the current location of Piazza Armerina, on higher ground three kilometres away."
This is the beautiful, octagonal massage room connected to both the hot and cold air rooms and hot and cold pools within the baths complex. That's bird netting in the foreground.
"The site is an ongoing EU-funded reconstruction project that began in spring 2007 and has so far cost more than €18 million. As well as conserving the mosaics, some of which had begun to blister, the money was spent cleaning the villa’s under-appreciated frescoes. The greenhouse-like structure (in the photo above) that was built to protect the site after it was first properly excavated during the 1950s, is being replaced.
At that time, the architect Franco Minissi’s plastic roof was considered ingenious. Over the years, though, its limitations became apparent: while the transparent plastic overhead allowed in natural light, shadows cast by the metal supports criss-crossed the mosaics. As the plastic aged, it became brittle and began to leak, exposing the mosaics to rainwater. Moreover, the effect of the roofs upon the temperature inside was similar to that within a glasshouse: in the summer, it was unbearable."
The mosaics are on the floors. The walls would have been stucco painted with murals. Extra shade cloth protects this area while it awaits a new roof.
All of the mosaics tell a story. Some areas/rooms were so big it was impossible to photograph the whole "story".
"In late antiquity the Romans partitioned most of the Sicilian hinterland into huge agricultural estates called "latifundia". The size of the villa and the amount and quality of its artwork indicate that it was the center of such a latifundium. The 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."
Above and below, the Basilica.
"The villa appeared to have served several purposes. It contained some rooms that were clearly residential, others that certainly had official purposes (like the two photographs above), and a number of rooms of unknown intended use."
"They were definitely not built for commercial or production uses. The villa would likely 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 center of the latifundium."
All rooms are visible from above via walkways, to preserve the floors. This was the master's private bedroom.
The protective roofs have been beautifully crafted in such a way as to give an idea if the original dimensions of the building.
Mosaics were considered inferior to marble in the Roman world, so the Basilica, the main reception area next to the master's private quarters, was paved with large marble slabs. Parts of this floor have subsided badly and the marble stolen over the centuries.
The best known of the mosaics is this one. You can see an earlier floor in the corner, underneath.
"In 1959-60, Gentili excavated a mosaic on the floor of the room dubbed the "Chamber of the Ten Maidens". Informally called "the bikini girls", the maidens appear in a mosaic artwork which scholars named Coronation of the Winner. The young women perform sports including weight-lifting, discus throwing, running and ball-games. A girl in a toga offers a crown and victor's palm frond to "the winner".
Another well known but rather unpleasant pictorial of a god disembowelling a sheep.
This is the floor of the anti-room of the master's wife's bed chamber. It is the only erotic scene in the villa.
And finally, the ten seater loo.
Next stop ... Montalbano territory.
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