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Photo (c)
Mauro Manmano
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Enna: Piazza Armerina, Villa romana del Casale
This villa is located near Piazza Armerina in south central Sicily. The
beautiful floors are done entirely in mosaic.
The “Villa Romana del Casale” has already been, in 1997,
declared from Unesco inalienable heritage of Mankind because
it quite represents not just an extraordinary and important
witness of the Roman lifestyle towards the end of the Empire
but even the complex system of economic, social and cultural
relations in which it was integrated with particular reference
to the Mediterranean basin.
Through its mosaics it is possible
to go again along the history of the greatest among the
Empires, a sort of photographic album that shows not just the
scenes of everyday life, but even representations of
Divinities and Heroes, hunting scenes, cupids and children
having races and others countless representations that leave
the visitor amazed by the beauty of everything he can see.
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The
villa, rising on an area of more then 3500 square meters, was
probably the hunting residence of the Emperor Massimiliano,
named Herculeos Victor; or the residence of an important roman
patrician, maybe Valerio Proculo Populonio. It presents 48
rooms. Almost in every room it is possible to see the splendid
mosaics made almost certainly by north African workers that
used to utilize this technique. The structure was made between
the end of the III Century and the beginning of the IV. The
first diggings of scientific importance were undertaken by the
Municipality of Piazza Armerina in 1881 and abandoned soon
after.
Later they were resumed between 1935 and 1939 but just in 1954 the
Villa begun to be dug out by the means of the great
archaeologist Gino Vinicio Gentili. Thanks to the digging,
lasting no less than 9 years, he gave to the world one of the
most amazing and inestimable jewel of the history of art.
Inhabited even during the Arabic age, the Villa was partially
destroyed by the Normans. Afterwards, an avalanche of mud,
coming from the Mount Mangone (raising above the Villa)
covered it almost totally. The morphology of the ground
conditioned and determined the plan metric development of
the structure, giving to it an organization on three levels.
The Villa follow the slope of the hill on which it rises,
determining architectonic peculiarities really remarkable. It
is divided into several parts: the residential zone (built
around the big central peristyle over which overlook even the
basilica, reserved to the official receptions); an official
zone with the elliptical peristyle (xistus) and the big
trilobite lounge (triclinio); the whole of the thermae with
the aqueduct that provided to its watering.
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Photo (c)
Mauro Manmano
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Photo (c)
Mauro Manmano
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The polygonal
courtyard that is the entrance to the Villa act as a Hinge
between the zones in which it is subdivided. All the pictures,
executed with the mosaic technique, deserve to be admired.
Among them the more popular are: in the “Ambulacro della
Grande Caccia” (the hall of the Great Hunting), the capture
and the transport of the animals destined to the circus games;
in the vestibule, the fight among Eros and Pan and the
portrayal of Ulisse and Polifemo; in the triclinium the
labours of Hercules. Surely the best known picture is that one
of the girls wearing Bikinis.
It is situated in one of the
rooms to the South of the peristyle. The Villa is easy to
reach through the motorway Palermo-Catania, leaving the
motorway at the Enna or Mulinello Junction and continuing
towards the city of Piazza Armerina; it is even possible to
use the railway links Palermo-Catania.
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More photos on the Villa from
Mauro... >>>
Text courtesy of
Enna Official Tourist Board APIT Enna
(c) 1997-2008 E. Massetti
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