Villa Romana del Casale

A landslide in the twelfth century buried this fourth-century villa and kept its floors intact, and when it was excavated in the twentieth century it turned out to hold around three and a half thousand square metres of mosaic, the largest and finest collection in situ anywhere in the Roman world. The subjects run from hunting scenes across a sixty-metre corridor showing animals being captured across Africa and shipped to Rome, to a room of young women exercising in what look unmistakably like bikinis, to the labours of Hercules. The quality suggests North African workshops and an owner of the very highest rank.

History

The villa was built in the first quarter of the 4th century AD over an older farm villa, as the master's house of a large agricultural estate, probably tied to the nearby settlement of Philosophiana on the Catania-Agrigento road, at a time when rural Sicily entered a new period of prosperity after two centuries of decline. It was damaged, and perhaps wrecked, during the brief Vandal rule of 469-478, the settlement around it was laid waste in 1160-1161 under William I, and after a landslide covered it the site was abandoned in the 12th century, which preserved some 3,500 square metres of mosaic and opus sectile floors. Gino Vinicio Gentili led the major excavations of 1950-1960, after which a protective cover was built, and in 1997 the villa became a World Heritage Site (Wikipedia, Villa Romana del Casale).

The main sights

• The Great Hunt corridor - sixty metres of animal capture and shipping.
• The bikini girls - young women exercising, in a small room off the peristyle.
• The Labours of Hercules - the triclinium floor.
• The scale - three and a half thousand square metres of floor.

When to go

April to June and September to October. The site is under a modern shelter, so rain is not an obstacle, but the shelter traps heat in summer. Mornings are quieter. Half a day covers it.

Things to know

The protective shelter over the villa is functional rather than sympathetic, and the walkways keep you at a distance that makes some floors hard to read. It is in the middle of Sicily with no easy public transport; a car is effectively required. Coach parties arrive mid-morning. Piazza Armerina nearby is pleasant but small.

Nearby

Piazza Armerina is five minutes; Morgantina's Greek site is half an hour.

Key facts