Villa Romana del Casale — archaeological site
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Villa Romana del Casale

Villa del Casale

  • 2 min read
  • 37.365° N 14.335° E
  • UNESCO World Heritage

Interesting facts

  • The famous mosaic of the so-called bikini girls was laid over an older floor, and it shows a real contest: weight-lifting, discus throwing, running and ball games.
  • In the same scene an official in a toga holds the prizes, a crown and a palm branch, while the winning athlete already wears her crown.
  • The Great Hunt corridor includes an elephant being hoisted aboard a ship and oxen dragging carts loaded with caged wild animals.
  • The floor of the three-apsed dining hall shows the monsters Hercules defeated in his twelve labours, with giants writhing from his arrows in one apse.
  • Another apse shows the Thracian king Lycurgus, who tried to kill the nymph Ambrosia and was instead trapped by grapevines and set upon by maenads.
  • The audience hall was entered between two columns of pink Egyptian granite, over a floor of coloured marbles gathered from around the Mediterranean.
  • Besides the mosaics, the villa had painted frescoes not only on its interior walls but on its outer walls as well.
  • The settlement that grew around the villa was known as Platia, a name derived from the Latin palatium, meaning palace.
  • When a landslide buried the site in the 12th century, the surviving inhabitants moved to where the town of Piazza Armerina stands today.
  • The villa was damaged during the Vandal occupation of Sicily in 469 to 478, and its walls were later thickened to turn it into a stronghold.

Why it is worth it

Beneath a modern protective roof in the hills of central Sicily lies the largest and most varied ensemble of Roman floor mosaics known to survive: about 3,500 square metres of figured mosaics and inlaid stone floors, still in the rooms for which they were made. The Villa Romana del Casale was a grand late Roman country residence, built in the first quarter of the 4th century AD over an earlier, more modest farm villa, and its floors show the world of the late empire in astonishing detail.

The house is arranged around a large colonnaded courtyard with a fountain, and from it open a bath complex, a vast apsed audience hall, private apartments and a formal three-apsed dining room. The most famous image is in the so-called Chamber of the Ten Maidens, where young women exercise, run and play ball in two-piece outfits that look strikingly like modern bikinis. A long corridor carries the Great Hunt, a panorama of wild animals being captured, loaded onto ships and carried off, presumably for the arenas of Rome. Other floors show Orpheus charming the beasts with his music, and Ulysses offering wine to the Cyclops Polyphemus. Who owned the villa remains debated: military insignia of the Tetrarchy have led some to propose an emperor such as Maximian, while others favour a senator of the highest rank.

The estate stayed in use long after antiquity, and a settlement grew up around it before being destroyed in 1160–61 under the Norman king William I. A landslide later buried the site, which is why so much survived. Fragments of mosaic and columns came to light in the early 19th century, systematic excavation began in 1929 under Paolo Orsi, and the main campaigns of the 1950s uncovered most of what is seen today. The villa was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1997. The nearby hill town of Piazza Armerina, in the province of Enna, is the usual base for the site.

Getting there

The villa lies about 3–4 km from the centre of Piazza Armerina, in the province of Enna. The nearest airport is Comiso Airport (CIY), about 48 km away in a straight line; Catania's airport, the main gateway to eastern Sicily, is farther to the east.

Plan your visit

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Nearby places

On these lists

The Most Beautiful Places in Sicily 25The Most Beautiful Places in Italy 279The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Sicily 5The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Sicily 6The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites in Italy 7The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Sicily 8The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders in Italy 10The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites in Italy 22The Greatest Archaeological Wonders in Italy 36The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Italy 44The Most Remarkable UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Sites 114The Greatest UNESCO-Listed Archaeological Wonders 149The Most Remarkable Archaeological Sites 193The Greatest Archaeological Wonders 306The Most Beautiful UNESCO World Heritage Sites 557

From the encyclopaedia

The Villa Romana del Casale is a large and elaborate Roman villa or palace located approximately 3 km from the town of Piazza Armerina, Sicily. Excavations have revealed Roman mosaics that according to the Grove Dictionary of Art, are the richest, largest, and most varied collection that remains there, and for which the site was designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1997. The villa and its artwork date to the early fourth century AD.

Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

37.36472, 14.33455per Wikidata