Somma Vesuviana, Italy
By any measure, this appeared to be the most massive ancient villa I had ever seen. Walls towered over me. Peering upward, I stretched my neck to observe their height — at least what was left of their full dimension after their destruction 1600 years ago. Metal scaffolding enveloped them and an enormous metal roof occupied space far above them, shielding them from the sun, wind, rain and other elements of the world outside. I was looking up from deep below ground surface. In contrast to the warmth of the sun’s radiation at ground level above me, the air was cool within this gargantuan, carefully and painstakingly excavated pit and I needed no hat to shield my head and face from the sun’s rays above.
Located near the small town of Somma Vesuviana at the foot of the northern slope of Vesuvius (opposite and invisible from ancient Pompeii and Herculaneum and referenced by some as the ‘dark side’ of Vesuvius), this site was initially discovered in the 1930’s with limited excavation. But the most extensive investigation began in 2002 through a multidisciplinary project with the University of Tokyo. Those excavations, now ongoing, have revealed the walls preserved to a remarkable height, doorways decorated with Dionysiac motifs, a pilastered arcade, apses and interior room walls decorated with frescoes, cisterns, terraces, colonnades — emblematic of spaces created to impress large public audiences — and a large wine cellar with dolia (large earthenware jars), some of which can be seen still buried to their lips in the ground. Scholars have determined that they still contained fermenting grape juice when the eruption occurred. For a time, this was clearly more than a wealthy person’s villa — it was also a production facility for wine, the principal product of the region. Many artifacts, including a marble statue of Dionysus, the god of wine himself, were also recovered in the process. But what we see today is but a fraction of the entire complex that once existed……
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