Ipogeo di Villa Glori

The hypogeum located on the hillside of Villa Glori (Viale Pilsudski) and entirely excavated in the tuff.

In 1794, the Danish naturalist Professor Abilgaard accidentally discovered an underground tomb dug into the tufa of the northern foothills of the Monti Parioli. In ancient times, the tomb stood on a path, later followed by the Vicolo della Rondinella, which, detaching itself from the main axis of the Via Flaminia, skirted the heights of what is now Villa Glori and headed towards the Tiber: the hypogeum was not meant to be isolated, but part of another cemetery area inside the one closest to the Via Flaminia. The sepulchre has been stripped of its sculptural furnishings and its stucco and mosaic decoration has been badly damaged, but the drawings by the Danish painter J.H. Cabott, made after the discovery of the tomb, partly make up for some serious shortcomings. The segmental vault was covered with a white stucco decoration with geometric partitions, with the fields separated by a braid motif and occupied by plant and figure motifs. In the centre of the composition, a rectangular field depicts the Dioscuri, while all around, in 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 there are figures and attributes from the Dionysian repertoire. Both ceilings of the side niches had a geometric partition with quadrangular elements arranged in regular rows around a larger central field occupied by a winged figure.

In the sepulchre there are both niches for depositing the bodies of the dead and niches for cinerary vessels. The original layout of the hypogeum is dated to the Antonine period with a prolonged use during the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.