Sadacora Roman Villa
About
Archaeologists near Incesu in Kayseri uncovered a villa identified with ancient Sadacora, its floors covered by 600 square meters of mosaic across roughly 33 rooms. Builders raised it in the 4th century AD, over two hundred years after Trajan died in 117 CE, likely for a high-ranking administrator. One reception hall carries a rare Latin inscription beside Greek text, a bilingual flourish deep in Anatolia. People kept living there through Byzantine times and after the Turkish conquest.
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 →