Villa di Damecuta
About
Tiberius raised this second grand villa directly above Capri's Blue Grotto sea cave, connecting the two with an internal passage cut through the rock. Excavations starting in 1937 uncovered marble floors and stuccoed walls, ranking Damecuta as the second-best-preserved of Tiberius's twelve island villas. Its scenic quarter let the emperor watch the sea from a shaded portico. The villa remained imperial property and still stood in 117 CE.
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
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 →