• Overall Impact. ****** 6 stars – some of the finest mosaics surviving from Late Antiquity, in situ and in remarkable condition. We think this was one of Maximian’s Palaces (although recent interpretations see it as the home of a very senior official).
• Roman Features. ***** 5 stars – everything here is preserved in its original position. It is a Roman Imperial Palace surviving to halfway up the original walls.
• Reconstruction. * 1 star – the new cover building has been cleverly built to reflect the ‘ghost’ profile of the original Palace.
• Access. ** 2 stars – a major site with a lot of visitors, on the coach tour routes as well. There is a market selling souvenirs and guide books by the car park and a fairly stiff climb up to the entrance. Unfortunately, the mandatory route round the site is single file, involves stairs and can be crowded.
• Atmosphere **** 4 stars – the new cover buildings cleverly recreate the impression of the original buildings and the number of amazing mosaics will stun you. Maximian chose a very pleasant valley. But lots of crowds unless you are very early or late.
• Other ***** 5 stars – the opulent and luxurious lifestyle of the C4th elite will haunt you after you have left. It’s one of the few places – Split and Trier are others – where you can immerse yourself in the Tetrarchy. Arguably the best in situ Roman mosaics anywhere?

The Villa Romana del Casale near Piazza Armerina in Sicily is, in our humble opinion, one of the top five remains from Late Antiquity, in terms of bringing the time and the lifestyle of the ruling elite to life in a really dramatic way. (Our top 5 are Split, Trier, Thessaloniki, Ravenna and Villa del Casale.) It has the best collection of mosaics outside the Bardo Museum in Tunisia, all in situ.

Phases of the palace

There are three phases of the palace:

1). A quadrangular fountain courtyard with columns surrounded by living and dining rooms, and a magnificent cross-corridor with the Mosaic of the Great Hunt, which opens onto a large (Imperial?) audience chamber with luxurious living accommodation on each side.

2). A luxurious baths suite was added on a different axis behind the entrance courtyard.

3). Finally, the Villa took on a more outward “imperial palace” character with a grand monumental entrance and a new elliptical arcade with a grand tri-apsidal hall. The whole villa was given a grand new entrance and the basilica expanded and decorated with exotic marbles. All of this space was used for receiving dignitaries as well as entertaining important guests.

Who was the owner?

There is debate about who this luxurious country palace was built for. To our mind the combination of the date; the Tetrarchic military insignia; the fine mosaics and their iconographic obsession with Hercules and his symbol, the ivy leaf; all suggest that this was one of Maximian’s retreats as Augustus. It is potentially where he retired to when required to abdicate by his fellow Augustus, Diocletian, who himself retired to his Fortress Palace at Split. The alternative owners – such as a wealthy senator or a senior imperial official – seem to us not to warrant such ostentatious luxury and particular symbolism.

The mosaics cover 3,500 sq ft and almost every floor surface.  The most extraordinary ones are as follows:

Introduction to the mosaics

The arrangement of the villa is quite confusing and it’s necessary to take a good look at the Plan before following the route you are forced to take round. (You can try doubling back if the crowds abate.) Before you get to the end we guarantee you will be totally mosaic’ed out, as one masterpiece follows another!

The decision in the 1950s to leave the mosaics in situ was a brave one but has been totally vindicated. The original ‘plastic greenhouse’ protection has now been replaced by clever protective buildings that are designed as ‘ghosts’ of the Villa’s original constructions.

The Mosaics in the main building are stylistically North African in origin and it is assumed that craftsmen were imported from there for this work.

We cannot replicate all the mosaics with our own pictures but will try to give you an idea of the wonders within, to encourage you to visit. Nor will we replicate the official tour which is cleverly conducted at high level looking down on the mosaics. Instead, we will highlight the different aspects which, on reflection, brought the site to life for us. (One of the the great things about Italian sites and galleries for as long as we have visited them is the availability of illustrated guide books at fabulously low prices!)

The Central Courtyard and the Surrounding Rooms

This is the heart of the palace. It contained a cooling fountain and flower beds in Roman times. The Peristyle, a fancy name for what is a pillared corridor or cloister, has a fine mosaic all the way round.

Off this corridor are a variety of grand rooms used for various purposes. Some are clearly dining rooms of the first version of the Palace – one shows the family hunting, and offering at a shrine to Mercury.

Another very famously has female athletes in bikinis exercising with balls and weights. This was a later conversion above a conventionally patterned mosaic.

Another room has Orpheus and was presumably for musical entertainments.

The Corridor of the Great Hunt

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The most stunning mosaic, to our mind, is the one that decorates the long corridor that runs along the far side of the Courtyard from the entrance. This shows Tetrarchic soldiers in their characteristic uniforms with tunic patches of rank, catching a wide variety of wild beasts for the arena from locations in North Africa, then transporting them to the Port of Carthage to go to Italy. Further along, Alexandria in Egypt and the Nile are shown and then hunts in India, where tigers are captured using a glass sphere. At one end the apse has a representation of Mauretania and at the other India. This simply stunning mosaic is carried through with great artistic energy and drama. Fortunately it is wonderfully preserved, despite some subsidence, and largely intact.

The Domestic Palace

One of the most charming features of visiting the Palace is that it is so clearly a family home – albeit one of amazing richness in decoration. This is shown by the mosaics in what is clearly the children’s wing to the right of the Great Hunt Corridor – with a parody mosaic of the Circus Maximus chariot race in the Exercise Hall (see below), possibly with portraits of the children of the house. The mosaics in other rooms here have children depicted too, again possibly portraits.

To the left of the Great Hunt Corridor there is the entrance to the Dominus and Domina’s suite of rooms with the famous mosaic of Ulysses and Polyphemus. The Cyclops Polyphemus – represented with three eyes – sits with a disemboweled ram. He is being offered a large bowl of wine by Ulysses with the aim of getting him drunk.

There is tasteful mosaic decoration in the Domina’s bedroom and a somewhat risqué mosaic in the middle of the Dominus’ bedroom (see picture at start).

The Formal Palace

The heart of the Formal Palace areas is the Basilica, which is surely an Imperial space complete with an apse like the Aula Palatina in Trier. This was the grand audience chamber, accessed through a monumental entrance flanked by two columns of Egyptian pink granite. The floor and walls were covered in exotic marbles from around the Empire.

Excavations revealed that the ceiling vault of the apse was covered with glass mosaics. If this isn’t an Imperial Audience Chamber, we don’t know what is!

The Basilica looks to be part of the original design. Added on a different axis was the Elliptical Courtyard (peristyle) leading to the Dining Room (triclinium). Recent excavations in the elliptical courtyard revealed the plumbing for fountains.

The dining room has three apses allowing three guest tables. Here was a mosaic showing the 12 labours of Hercules and his apotheosis with Jupiter – clearly a reference to Maximian as Hercules Augustus and his senior Augustus Diocletian. (See, for comparison, Maximian’s Palace in south-west France at Chirigan with carved representations of the Labours of Hercules – now exhibited in the Musée Raymond in Toulouse.)

The style of the mosaics here is different and is thought to be Hellenistic. The facial expressions are different and Dionysian themes run through the composition with grapes and baby cupids. In the south apse is Lycurgus who tried to kill the nymph Ambrosia but was strangled by grapevines All very suitable themes for well-lubricated feasts!

The Baths Suite

The Baths appear to have been upgraded and are on yet another axis to the original building. The family’s private entrance has a small changing room with a charming depiction of members of the family accompanied perhaps by their personal slaves.

This leads into a sumptuous exercise hall with a mosaic showing chariot racing in the Circus Maximus, with a view-point from the Imperial Box – surely another sign that this is Maximian’s Palace.

The upgraded baths suite with the usual circuit of warm and hot baths features mosaics of muscular athletes. The baths were heated by massive furnaces fed from outside.

Monumental Entrance

The final improvement to the palace seems to have been the creation of a monumental entrance designed to look like a triumphal arch.

What’s Missing

What we don’t see are the farm buildings and the accommodation for the slaves and servants of the household. This was the centre of a massive estate in central Sicily and the manpower and consumption to keep all of this going would have been huge.