Hypogeum of Villa Glori

The underground tomb dug into the tuff is located on the hillside of Villa Glori (Viale Pilsudski), in the northern reaches of the Parioli Mountains. Discovered by chance in 1794 by the Danish naturalist Abigaard, it once stood on a route, subsequently retraced by the Vicolo della Rondinella which, breaking away from the main axis of the via Flaminia, ran alongside the heights of the current Villa Glori and headed towards the Tiber: the hypogeum it should not have been isolated, but inserted in a further internal cemetery area compared to the one closest to the Via Flaminia.

The tomb was stripped of its sculptural furnishings and the stucco and mosaic decorations were significantly damaged, however the drawings of the Danish painter J.H. Cabott made in the aftermath of the discovery, partially make up for some serious gaps. The vault, with a lowered arch, was covered with a white stucco decoration with a geometric partition with the fields separated from each other by a braid motif and occupied by vegetal and figurative motifs. At the centre of the composition in a rectangular field are depicted the Dioscuri, while all around, within six octagonal fields we find Bacchus on the back of a panther, drunken Hercules sitting on an old centaur, maenads and fauns with the attributes of the four seasons. In the smaller fields, figures and attributes from the Dionysian repertoire recur. Both ceilings of the lateral niches featured a geometric partition with quadrangular elements arranged in regular rows around a larger central field occupied by a winged figure. In the tomb there are simultaneously loculi for placing the bodies of the deceased and niches for the cinerary urns. The original layout of the hypogeum dates back to the Antonine era with prolonged use during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.

Photo credits: courtesy of Capitoline Superintendence