Villa of the Labyrinth
About
Hippo Regius's seafront quarter held this colonnaded villa, named for a labyrinth-pattern mosaic laid into one of its floors. Successive owners repaved its rooms across four centuries, with the earliest phases dating to the 1st century AD beneath later mosaic layers. On 11 August 117 CE the villa looked out over Hippo's harbor, decades before Augustine's mother Monica would be born in the same city. Archaeologists still work out which mosaic belongs to which building phase.
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 →