Villa of Damblain

VillaGallia Belgica · Damblain, Vosges, FranceBuilt 70 CE

About

The bath wing of the villa at Damblain went up during the second half of the 1st century CE, serving a master's residence at the heart of a large farming estate in Leuci territory. INRAP excavators working two seasons, in 2008 and 2009, found its rooms finished with opus sectile floors, marble veneers, painted plaster, and mosaic pavements. The estate stayed in use into the 3rd century before the buildings fell into disrepair and the land returned to farmland. In 117 CE the bath suite had already stood for several decades, hidden until archaeologists found it beneath a former NATO air base runway nearly two thousand years later.

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.