← Back to the map Ruins of the colonnaded peristyle at the Palazzo delle Colonne in Ptolemais, Libya

Palazzo delle Colonne, Ptolemais · Wikimedia Commons

Palazzo delle Colonne

Domus Praesidis

VillaCreta et Cyrenaica · Tolmeita, Cyrenaica, LibyaBuilt 150 BCE

About

Ptolemais's governor lived behind this 165-meter colonnaded facade, raised under the last Ptolemies and fitted out with Roman-style rooms during the 1st century AD. A grand peristyle led to mosaic-floored dining halls where a Medusa mosaic guarded one threshold, alongside a private bath suite and separate women's wing. On 11 August 117 CE the palace still anchored the city beside its agora, a Hellenistic mansion wearing a fresh Roman face. Polish archaeologists began excavating it in 1937.

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.