|
Discovered the villa where August died
The Roman patricians had chosen this area,
Campania Felix, to build these luxurious villas to pass
their time in peace, far away from clamor of the political life and
from noisy
Rome.
The beauty and the tranquillity of these places was so much that
Tacito
and
Svetonio
write that imperator
August
died in one of these magnificent villas near
Nola
(“apud
Nolæ”),
where there were many properties of noble Roman families.
In the 1932 Matteo Della Corte,
inspector of the Soprintendenza di Napoli,
when the
Soprintendenza di Pompei e Ercolano didn't exist, effected an
excavation in the area of Somma Vesuviana,
because a farmer noticed something strange in
1929. The discovery, even though small and partial (an
area of 5 x 5 ms), it showed
that there was something important.
The excavations, situated in the place of
Starza della Regina, in the commune of
Somma Vesuviana, started again
in 2001, thanks to the interest
of University of Tokyo, in
collaboration with the University Federico
II and the University Suor
Orsola Benincasa, and under the supervision of the
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Napoli.
 The
archaeological site is found to the slopes of the
Monte Somma, on the northern
slope of the
Vesuvius,
in an area more times subject to the damages provoked by the
repeated volcanic eruptions; an area where natural events and human
vicissitudes had a secondary impact, in comparison with the
coastal area, where excavations and
archaeological searches started, at the beginning of the
XVIII century.
The project is for seven year
work, now it’s in the fourth year. The results are excellent because
very important archaeological material
was found.
After the first year exclusively devoted to a
recognition
and geo-technical tests of the
territory, in the
2002
started the excavation, that discovered in an area of ten meters for
ten, the hole dug by the Della Corte.
In 2004 has been found a square
structure with the
pillars
that sustain the
arcs,
realized not with bricks and mortar, but with great blocks of
grey Vesuvian stone, outlined
with frames of white limestone. The structure dates back to the last
period of Roman Republic and lasted till
V-VI century, than buried by an eruption.
The excavation has an area of 25 meters for
30, for a total of seven hundred square meters. Inside
they found a
courtyard
which floor is deep about eight meters and half, and the structures
inside are preserved for a height of six meters. These structures
with arcs are particular, they
join two parallel walls which are distant fifteen meters. Other
rooms
connected to this courtyard has been found. If it is not the
Villa of August, that villa
belonged surely to a very important person, a senator or a
patrician.
The factory, according to the prospecting effected with the
geo-radars, is extended on a
surface of thousand of square meters.
|
Italiano
E-mail
