Villa Laurentina
About
Pliny the Younger devoted an entire letter (Epistulae 2.17) to this seaside retreat 17 Roman miles from the city, close enough that he could work a full day in Rome and reach it by lamplight. He described a heated bath suite, a covered winter walkway, and a tower overlooking the shore, built for year-round rather than seasonal use. Excavations near Castel Fusano since the 1930s have been proposed as the site, though the exact match is scholarly-disputed. Pliny was almost certainly still using the property when Trajan died 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 →