Villa of the Quintilii

Listen for a moment. Wind moves through the dry grass, and somewhere a skylark is calling. Under your feet the ground is uneven, studded with fragments of brick and the odd chip of white marble. Rome is only a few kilometres away, yet out here the sky feels wide. The ruins rise from the open countryside like a small, broken city.

That impression is very old. For centuries, the people who farmed these fields did not believe a single family could have built all this. They called the place Roma Vecchia, which means Old Rome. They assumed the scattered walls belonged to a vanished town. In fact, they were looking at one private estate, the Villa of the Quintilii. It ranks among the largest residences of the Roman suburbs.

The villa takes its name from two brothers, Sextus Quintilius Condianus and Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus. They came from a wealthy, cultured family, and they were famously close. In the year 151 they even served as consuls together. That was the highest office a Roman could hold short of emperor. Ancient writers remembered them as inseparable, sharing their careers, their wealth, and this enormous country house.

Their story does not end well. In the late second century, the emperor Commodus came to power. He was the son of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher emperor, but he governed in a very different spirit. Commodus grew suspicious of powerful senators. Around the early 180s, he had both brothers put to death. Their property was seized. And so this villa passed into the hands of the emperor himself.

Here is a detail many visitors miss. The historian Cassius Dio, who lived through these years, tells a remarkable tale about a son of the family. According to Dio, the young man drank the blood of a hare. Then he staged a fall from his horse, coughed up the blood, and appeared to die. A ram was placed in his coffin and burned in his place, while he slipped away. Whether every part is true, nobody can say.

Why did an emperor want this villa so badly? Partly for its position. Look at the long, straight road that runs along one edge of the site. That is the Appian Way, the great road that led south from Rome toward the ports of southern Italy. Owning a grand house on this road meant every important traveller passed your door. The villa was a statement of status, placed where everyone could see it.

Now turn toward the tallest walls. These are the remains of the baths, and they show how ambitious the complex became under imperial ownership. Romans built their baths as a sequence of rooms: warm, hot, and cold. The cold room here, the frigidarium, still stands to an impressive height. Notice the brickwork. Thin red bricks are laid in neat bands over a core of concrete. It is a technique that let Romans build high and fast.

Originally, almost none of this brick was visible. The walls were faced with coloured marble, painted plaster, and mosaic. Imagine polished green and yellow stone, imported from across the Mediterranean, catching the light from high windows. The bare walls you see now are the skeleton. The skin was stripped away long ago, often burned for lime or carried off for new buildings in the city.

That stripping was not only medieval. In the eighteenth century, antiquarians and collectors dug here for statues. Many sculptures from the villa ended up in the Vatican and in other collections across Europe. The site was mined for beauty, and much of what it held now sits in museum galleries far from where it was made. What stays here is the plan of the house, written in foundations.

And yet the ground still surprises people. In recent years, archaeologists uncovered an elaborate wine-making installation within the estate. It was no simple farm cellar. The floors where grapes were pressed were finished in marble, and the juice seems to have flowed through fountains as part of a display. Researchers believe the production of wine became a kind of theatre for guests. Pressing grapes, here, was entertainment as well as work.

The Italian state acquired this land in the late twentieth century, and today the villa forms part of the archaeological park of the Appian Way. A small museum near one entrance displays finds from the site. These include fragments of sculpture, decorative marble, and everyday objects. It is worth stopping there. The pieces help you picture the rooms that now stand open to the sky.

As you walk, notice how the setting has shaped the experience. There are umbrella pines, low stone walls, and long views across the Roman countryside, which Italians call the Campagna. On clear days you can see the hills south of the city on the horizon. You may also hear aircraft overhead, since a Roman airport lies not far away. Ancient silence and the modern world sit very close together out here.

Before you leave, stand still once more among the ruins. Think of the two brothers who walked these same paths as friends, and of the emperor who took it all from them. Look down at the brick fragments in the grass, and up at the high walls of the baths. Then turn back toward the Appian Way, with its worn paving stones. People have travelled along that road for more than two thousand years, and today you are one of them.