Villa del Cimitero Flaminio

At kilometre 1.6 of the Via Tiberina, on the slope of a hill on a tufaceous bank, today inside the Prima Porta cemetery, stands a Roman villa with residential, productive, thermal and mausoleum parts, discovered by chance in 1942 during work on the construction of the Cemetery.

It is arranged on two sloping terraces: the residential area was at the top, the thermal area at the bottom.
It was built at the end of the Republican period or at the beginning of the Augustan one, at the end of the 1st century BC. C., but there was certainly an earlier phase, evidenced by a network of cisterns and underground tunnels arranged in a radial pattern, dug into the tuff and plastered, datable between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. C.

Most of the rooms were paved with black and white or polychrome mosaics. The floor of the portico was divided into mosaic panels with geometric and plant motifs, in one of which amphorae are depicted in the corner areas.
The villa was enlarged for the first time in the 2nd century A.D., when the baths were built, of the freestanding pavilion type and equipped with a latrine. Some of the rooms were heated using the suspensurae system, i.e. cavities under the floors. Access to the baths was through a vestibule that led into the changing room and then into the calidarium, with two marble-lined basins for hot ablutions. The frigidarium was a large room paved in cipolin marble with two apsidal basins lined in marble and accessible by steps. Next to the baths was an area laid out as a garden, as evidenced by eleven amphora necks planted in the ground, in which ornamental plants were placed.

The original phase of the Mausoleum in opus listata, with a square plan and vaulted roof, also dates from the 2nd century AD. It was surrounded on three sides by a barrel-vaulted corridor. A staircase, of which few traces remain, led to the upper floor, which no longer exists.
Between the 2nd and 3rd century another mausoleum was added, covered by six cross vaults. Attached to the walls were found 10 pits, with remains of burials.

A little later, the villa was equipped with a facility for the production of oil and wine, which were stored in a special room with a large number of buried dolia. A millstone made of lava stone was also found.
The complex remained in use until the 5th-6th century.

Excavations have yielded numerous finds, including oil lamps, tombstones, antefixes, a fragment of a single-footed marble table with the busts of a maenad and a Silenus, parts of columns and capitals.