Augustan Villa of the Farnesina

About

Workers laying Tiber embankments in 1879 struck the buried remains of a luxury villa on the river's west bank, its rooms covered floor to ceiling in Third Style frescoes and stucco reliefs from the height of the Augustan age. Scholars tie its ownership to Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa and, through him, to Augustus's daughter Julia. Its garden-room paintings and gilded stuccowork, now reassembled in Rome's Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, rank among the finest domestic decoration to survive from Augustus's reign. Note: the ancient find-site is unrelated to the 16th-century Renaissance building of the same modern name.

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

• https://www.worldhistory.org/image/1378/roman-fresco-villa-of-the-farnesina-rome/