Villa Romana di Durrueli
About
A landowner raised this seaside villa above Punta Grande in the 1st century AD, arranging guest rooms around a central peristyle floored in marble slabs and polychrome mosaic. Railway workers cutting a bed for the Castelvetrano-Porto Empedocle line found it by accident in 1907. A second wing with private baths was added in the 2nd century AD, expanding an estate that once ran this stretch of Agrigento's coast. On 11 August 117 CE the original villa had already welcomed guests for decades.
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 →