Perhaps the best way to introduce the site of Villa Magna is through a story about the emperor Marcus Aurelius. In AD 144-5, at the age of 23, Marcus Aurelius traveled from Rome to the imperial villa at Villa Magna where his adoptive father Antoninus Pius awaited him. In letters to his tutor, Fronto, he describes two days spent there. See original text below¹

We set out to hunt, did great deeds; we did hear that boars had been captured but saw nothing ourselves. We did climb a steep enough hill; then in the afternoon we came home, I to my books. So taking off my boots and my clothes I read on my bed for two hours Cato’s oration On the property of Pulchra and another in which he impeached a tribune. It is no good sending me books, for these have followed me here…

We are well. I overslept a little, because of my slight cold, which seems to have calmed down. From five until nine I read Cato’s Agricultura and wrote, less badly, thank god, than yesterday. Then I paid my respects to my father… Having cleaned my throat I went to my father and assisted him at sacrifice. Then I went to lunch. What do you think I ate? Just a little piece of bread, but I saw others devouring beans, onions and herrings filled with roe. Then we gave ourselves to the vintage, and sweated together and were joyous and so on, and as the author says ‘ we left some high bunches on the vines’. At the sixth hour we came home.

I studied a little and badly. Then with my little mother sitting on the bed I chattered a lot… The gong rang, that is, it was announced that my father was going to the bath. Then we, bathed, ate in the oil pressing room—we didn’t bath in it, but had dinner having bathed, and happily heard the peasants teasing.

The location

The site of the villa where this rural idyll took place is known today as Villamagna and lies just south of Anagni, some 40 miles south of Rome, at the foot of a steep hill that must be the one referred to in the text. Covering at least a dozen hectares, the site of the villa today shows little of its former splendour. The remains consist of three ranges of cisterns fed by an aqueduct which probably leads from a spring at the base of the wooded hill, a nineteenth-century casale built on top of a range of substructures which form the basis villae for some part of the ancient villa, and various traces of substructures on the long ridge running down from the casale towards the road. Halfway along this ridge there is a complex of medieval structures, including a large church with a Romanesque apse and masonry of much earlier periods (seventh century?) and some late medieval walls.

The Project

The project has been undertaken jointly by the British School at Rome, the University of Pennsylvania and the Archaeological Superintendency of Lazio. The director is Elizabeth Fentress, with co-directors Andrew Wallace Hadrill and Sandra Gatti representing the British School at Rome and the Soprintendenza Archeologica del Lazio respectively, and associate directors Ann Kuttner and Brian Rose, representing the University of Pennsylvania. The local community has provided enthusiastic support for the project, contributing housing and some board for the team and hosting a presentation of the project at the town hall.

The objectives of the project

Although 29 villas of the emperors are known from Latium alone, there have been almost no modern excavations on these sites. An exception, Trajan’s villa at Arcinazzo, is revealing splendid painted wall plaster and opus sectile decoration, as well as an exceptional range of finds. We propose the excavation of Villamagna as a ten-year project, aiming to reveal as much as possible of the buildings of the villa, and to study its occupation over the longue durée. The lack of deep ploughing seems to guarantee exceptional preservation of many of the ancient structures, giving a unique opportunity to investigate the architecture and decorative aspects of an imperial villa. Paleobotanical and osteological research should throw light both onto the gardens of the site as well as the economy of the villa and its successor settlements. The monastery that occupies the center of the ridge will be particularly interesting for the study of the implantation of monasticism on classical sites, and in particular the development of a small rural monastery from the early middle ages through the fifteenth century.

The means by which these aims will be achieved are as important as the ends. The project is intended as a training excavation for American, British and Italian students, both undergraduate and graduate. As we can be certain that many of the structures will require conservation from the moment they are excavated, we propose to integrate conservation training into the project from the beginning, following each season of excavation with an equally long season of conservation and finds processing. A management plan for the site would be a secondary object, developed over the course of the project, in collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendency of Lazio. Such an integrated training program will give a priceless opportunity to train students in the range of skills required by modern archaeology.

Ad venationem profecti sumus, fortia facinora fecimus, apros captos esse fando audimus, nam videndi quidem nulla facultas fuit. Clivom tamen satis arduom successimus; inde postmeridie domum recepimus. Ego me ad libellos. Igitur calceis detractis, vestimentis positis, in lectulo ad duas horas commoratus sum Legi Catonis orationem De bonis Pulchrae et aliam qua tribuno diem dixit. …. Frustra mittis, nam et isti libri me secuti sunt. …

(iv. 6) Nos valemus. Ego aliquantulum prodormivi, propter perfrictiunculam, quae vedetur sedata esse. Ego ab undecima noctis in tertiam diei parti legi ex Agricultura Catonis partim scripsi, minus misere mehercule quam heri. Inde salutato patre meo…. Sed faucibus curatis abii ad patrem meum et immolanti adstiti. Deinde ad merendam itum. Quid me ceses prandisse? Panis tantulum, quom conchim caepas et maenas bene praegnatas alios vorantes viderem. Deinde uvis metendis operam dedimus et consudavimus et iubilavimus et aliquot, ut ait auctor,, reliquimus altipendulos vindemiae supersittes. Ab hora sexta domum rediimus. …

2. Paululum studui atque id ineptum. Deinde cum matercula mea supra torum sedente multum garrivi…Discus crepuit, id est, pater meus in balneum transisse nuntiatus est. Loti igitur in torculari cenavimus : non loti in torculari, sed loti cenavimus : et rusticos cavillantes audivimus libenter.