Hadrian's Villa
About
Hadrian would spend the next two decades building the largest and most experimental villa complex the Roman world ever saw, drawing on architecture he had seen touring Egypt, Greece, and the East. On 11 August 117 CE, the day this map is frozen at, Hadrian has just become emperor and not one stone of it has been laid; brickmakers are only beginning to stockpile material nearby. The valley where it will rise is, for now, still open countryside.
What happened here
A working estate with a comfortable house attached, and the proportions vary with how rich the owner is and how often he visits. The farm side has presses for oil and wine, threshing floors, storage sunk into the ground, stables and quarters for the workforce. The residential side has baths, dining rooms sited for the view, mosaics, and a garden with water in it. A manager runs the place year-round and reports; the owner arrives for the vintage and for the summer. Produce goes to market or to the owner's town house, and the accounts are kept in detail. Some villas are pure retreat with no farm at all, built on a cliff or a lake specifically to be looked at from a boat.
Sources
Nearby
Roman Maps shows the empire frozen at 11 August 117 CE, the day Trajan died — its moment of greatest territorial extent. Explore the full map →