Villa Magna

History

The villa is likely to have been constructed over a Republican villa rustica. It may have become the property of Pompey the Great in the 60s BC and was taken over as imperial property after his sons' death. The villa was greatly expanded from the 120s AD and was used by Antoninus Pius (r.138-161). The elaborate winery and its use described in the letters of Marcus Aurelius indicate that the villa was used to hold an important regional religious and secular festival celebrating the vintage, the vendemmia for Latium. The power, wealth and extravagance of the emperor was emphasised in the winery which is an early form of ceremonial winery in imperial villas of the late 2nd to early 3rd century (such as the imperial Villa of the Quintilii) which replaced the earlier integration of ceremony and ritual in Republican and Augustan atria.

In 207 under Septimius Severus the road that led to the villa was paved, according to an inscription now in the cathedral of Anagni.

Sometime afterwards (Phase II) the winery was modified including a new semi-circular room. Later (Phase III), the winery was levelled and useful materials removed followed by abandonment and roof collapse.

At the age of 23, the future emperor Marcus Aurelius visited the villa where his adoptive father Antoninus Pius was staying. In letters to his tutor, Fronto, he describes two days spent there at a festival inaugurating the vintage of Latium:

We set out to hunt, did great deeds; we did hear that boars had been captured but saw nothing ourselves. We did climb a steep enough hill; then in the afternoon we came home, I to my books. So taking off my boots and my clothes I read on my bed for two hours Cato’s oration On the property of Pulchra and another in which he impeached a tribune. It is no good sending me books, for these have followed me here…. …

The Site

The remains visible above ground, covering at least 12 hectares, consist of:

three ranges of cisterns fed by an aqueduct which probably led from a spring at the base of the wooded hill

a range of substructures (underlying a 19th-century casale) which were the basis villae for some part of the ancient villa, and

various traces of substructures on the long ridge running down from the casale towards the road.

The most spectacular excavated building is the winery/banquetting hall which included a lavishly decorated dining area, baths and the wine production and storage areas with a large doliarium lying under the pressing floor, where the workers trod the grapes. The doliarium was paved with precious marble, as was the banqueting hall in front of it, where the emperor and his guests would have watched the ceremonial pressing of the grapes. In the same building were found the baths where the emperor and his suite bathed. Excavations brought to light vast quantities of exotic marble, mosaic and fresco which once decorated it. The complex was entered via a monumental staircase and corridor lined with marble with bands of pavonazetto and with white mosaic flooring. This building has similarities to that at the imperial Villa of the Quintilii near Rome.

The baths to the south had a different orientation to the winery and seem to be a separate building, but the monumental staircase and corridor connected the two parts and they are both clearly within the overall scheme. The marble panelled veneers of the walls of the staircase and corridor had a low dado of red portasanta marble above which was a moulding in white luna marble. The panels included portasanta, giallo antico and porphyry marbles and had collapsed onto the pavement where imprints in the mortar allowed their reconstruction.

The only other extensively excavated building is the so-called "barracks", to the north of the complex which includes 31 small rooms with beaten earth floors. Eight infants were found interred inside and the rooms have little decoration, some domestic pottery and some hairpins. The few hearths and storage vessels indicate it may have been for seasonal workers and the lack of contemporary burials indicates no stable labour force. …