PIAZZA ARMERINA
Casale, Sicily. 17B. A Roman
villa of the Late Empire, ca. 3 km SW of the Norman
city from which the site takes its name. The site is at the
foot of a semicircular plateau on the slope of the valley
and overlooks the left bank of a stream that flows into
the Gela river. The villa was reached from the S by a
secondary road off the main route between Catana and
Agrigentum in the statio of Philosophiana (Soffiana).
Now completely excavated, the villa was built in
accordance with a well-defined plan within the great
walls of the aqueducts to the E and NW and the walls
flanking the approach to the magnificent triple-arched
entrance. The main villa consisted of four groups of
rooms with galleries, peristyles, courtyards, and baths.
Overall, it is a remarkable complex of buildings, asymmetrical and oddly planned, with the predilection for
exedral cavities so dear to the Late Imperial period.
Each of the four major sections is easily distinguishable
by the differences in level overcome by flights of steps,
for the villa abounded in terraces imposed by the nature
of the terrain.
From the porticoed polygon of the entrance one
descends to the lower terraces where stand a great porticoed latrine and the principal nucleus of the baths,
with the gymnasium and the tepidarium in the style of
an atrium, apsidal at both ends, and the frigidarium.
Octagonal, with the swimming pools and large niches
disposed on a curve and thrusting outwards, bulwarked
by sturdy supporting pylons, the whole scheme recalls
the well-known type of the so-called temple of Minerva
Medica in Rome.
On the middle terrace, to the E of the baths and the
atrium of the entrance stands the rectangular peristyle,
which, with its rooms to the N and S, comprises the
second section. Its columns, with Corinthian capitals
typical of the end of the 3d c. A.D., were nearly all found
lying on the ground. To the S of the peristyle on a higher
terrace rises the
third group of buildings, erected round
an oval court—a xystus—flanked on either of its long
sides by three small rooms. Its W end is an immense
semicircular apse formerly colonnaded, with large niches
and an external buttressed polygonal wall. Facing the
apse on the E stood a huge trichora hall, the majestic
triclinium. In the
fourth group of buildings, together with
the private apartments on the E side of the central peristyle, there is a large apsidal basilica, accessible from a
majestic corridor, apsidal at both ends and serving as
a chalcidicum or narthex.
The connected architectural structure of this splendid
Late Roman Imperial Villa has precedents in other Imperial constructions with similar planimetry and arrangements of rooms. Its structural and architectural plan is
substantially a rational development of the Domus
Flavia on the Palatine and the Villa of Domitian at
Castel Gandolfo, both in its concentration and in the
distribution of groups of buildings over a large area.
The attribution of the villa to Tetrarchic times is
based primarily on the fact that ceramics of light-colored
clay characteristic of the 3d c. A.D. have been found
below the mosaic pavements in all sectors where their
removal was necessary for consolidation. Coins also were
found, mostly of the type of the Antoniniani that span
the period from Gallienus to Probus; and an Antoninianus of Maximianus Herculeus was found under
the marble threshold of the SE apodyterium of the
frigidarium. The attribution also takes into account the
stylistic evidence of the mosaics and data which includes,
for example, a comparison of the reliefs of the base of
the Decennalia in the Roman Forum and those of the
Arch of Galerius at Salonika with the watercolors left
by Wilkinson of the Tetrarchic paintings of the Temple
of the Imperial Cult in the Roman camp at Luxor.
In the richness of its marble columns, the rare and
precious marbles that must originally have covered the
walls of the rooms, the opus sectile of the Basilica, and
the sheer magnificence of the mosaic pavement, extending for over 3500 sq. m, it can be compared to the splendors of Hadrian's villa at Tivoli or Diocletian's Palace at Split, which was apparently contemporary. The
mosaics are for the most part large pictures designed by
artists of remarkable talent to provide accent for the
vast spaces of the rooms. They were undoubtedly
executed by experienced master mosaicists from North
Africa in a style expressive even today of a mood at
times rash and bloody and at times veiled with sadness.
The style reflects the grandiose art of the post-Severan
period as exemplified by the athletes of the Baths of
Caracalla, and certain aesthetic phenomena under Gallienus, influenced perhaps by theories of Plotinus. The
mosaics appear to be a natural blending of these elements
with stylistic components of the expressionistic and
baroque art of the Tetrarchy. This style preceded the
flowering of the classicizing renaissance under Constantine, to which period the mosaic of a mutatio vestis
in the exedra of the frigidarium may be ascribed. The
mosaics preceded the more mature and fluid style that
appeared in the Theodosian period.
In the four sections of the villa described above, the
major mosaics are: 1) in the bath complex, Chariot Race
in the Circus Maximus; and in the vestibule to the bath
complex from the living quarters, Domina with Her
Children and Servants Entering the Baths; 2) in the
peristyle, Beasts and Birds; in the tablinum that precedes
the peristyle, Adventus; in the rooms off the peristyle,
Small Hunt, Orpheus, Girl Gymnasts; 3) in the three
apses of the triclinium, Labors of Hercules, Lycurgus
and Ambrosia; 4) in the apsidal corridor preceding the
large basilica, the celebrated Great Hunt; in the rooms
on either side of the basilica, Polyphemus and Odysseus,
Four Seasons, Little Circus, Pan and Eros, Arion on
the Dolphin. Taken together the mosaics constitute in
their complexity one of the major galleries of figurative
art from the ancient world.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
G. V. Gentili,
NSc 4 (1951) 332ff with
bibliography; id., “I mosaici della villa romana del Casale
di Piazza Armerina,”
BdA (1952) 33ff; id.,
La villa
imperiale di Piazza Armerina (Itinerari di musei e monumenti d' Italia, 1956); id., “Le gare del circo nel mosaico
di Piazza Armerina,”
BdA (1957) 23ff; id.,
La villa
erculia di Piazza Armerina. I mosaici figurati (1959);
Enciclopedia Italiana 3 (1961) 418f (G. V. Gentili);
EAA 6 (1965) 146-54; B. Pace, “Note su una villa
romana presso Piazza Armerina,”
RendLinc 5 (1951);
id.,
I mosaici di Piazza Armerina (1955); H. P. L'Orange
& E. Dyggve, “É un palazzo di M. Erculeo che gli scavi
da Piazza Armerina portano alla luce?”
SimbOslo 29
(1952) 114; L'Orange, “Aquileja e Piazza Armerina,”
Studi Aquilejesi (1953) 185ff; id., “The Adventus Ceremony and the Slaying of Pentheus as Represented in
Two Mosaics of about A.D. 300,”
Late Classical and
Medieval Studies in Honor of A. M. Friend (1955) 13ff;
id., “Il Palazzo di Massimiano Erculeo di Piazza
Armerina,”
Studi in onore di A. Calderini e R. R.
Paribeni (1956) 593ff; id.,
Likeness and Icon (1974);
S. Mazzarino, “Sull'otium di M. Erculeo dopo l'abdicazione,”
RendLinc (1953) 417ff; G. Giannelli & S.
Mazzarino,
Trattato di storia romana, II (1956) 417-578; N. Neuerburg, “Some Considerations on the
Architecture of the Imperial Villa at Piazza Armenina,”
Marsyas 8 (1957/59) 22-29
PI; G. Manganaro, “Aspetti
Pagani dei Mosaici di Piazza Armerina,”
ArchCl 11
(1959) 242ff; G. C. Picard, “Mosaiques africaines de
III siecle ap. F.C.,”
RA (1960) II, 38; N. Duval, “Que
savons-nous du palais de Theodoric à Ravenne?”
MélRome 72 (1960) 370; M. Cagiano de Azevedo, “I
proprietari della villa di Piazza Armenina,”
Scritti in
onore di M. Salmi (1961); A. Ragona,
Un sicuro punto
di partenza per la datazione dei mosaici della villa
romana di Piazza Armerina (1961); id.,
Il proprietario
della villa romana di Piazza Armerina (1962); I. Lavin,
“The house of the Lord . . . ,”
AB (1962) 1ff; G. Lugli,
“Contributo alla storia edilizia alla villa romana di Piazza
Armenina,”
RivIstArch 11-12 (1963) 28-82; A. Carandini, “Richerche sullo stile e la cronologia dei mosaici
della villa di Piazza Armerina,”
Studi Miscellanei dell'Istituto di Archeologia 7 (1964); M. L. Rinaldi, “Il costume romano e i mosaici di Piazza Armerina,”
RivIstArch 13-14 (1964-65) 200-62; W. Dorigo,
Pittura Tardoromana (1966) 129-65; H. Kaehler, “La villa di
Massenzio a Piazza Armerina,”
Acta Inst. Norvegiae 4
(1969); id.,
Die Villa des Maxentius bei Piazza Armerina
[
Monumenta artis Romanae, 12] (1973).
G. V. GENTILI
