Villa of Mané-Véchen
About
A wealthy Gallo-Roman merchant of the Veneti raised the maritime villa of Mané-Véchen on the Ria d'Etel around the end of the 2nd century CE, decades after the period this map depicts. Its reception halls were heated beneath the floor, and one room held three built-in benches arranged around a hypocaust for warmth. A fire closed the villa at the end of the 3rd century, and although squatters briefly moved back in, the site was finally abandoned early in the 4th century. In 117 CE this stretch of coast above the ria was still open land, roughly eighty years before the villa's first walls went up.
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 →