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Oplontis
Identified from the Tabula
Peutingeriana, a twelfth-century
copy of a Roman map, ancient
Oplontis was a seaside town,
located five kilometers to the
west of Pompeii. Today the site
is occupied by the modern town
of Torre Annunziata.
To date, archaeologists
have identified three different
ancient sites: Oplontis A, B,
and C. The focus of the Oplontis
Project is Villa A, sometimes
called the villa of Poppaea
owing to its possible
association with the family of
Nero’s second wife, Poppaea
Sabina.
Discovery
In 1590, the Count of Sarno
engaged the architect Domenico
Fontana to construct a canal to
bring the waters of the Sarnus
River from Serino to Torre
Annunziata, where the water
would power a grain mill and an
arms factory.
This canal cut across the
south side of the villa of
Oplontis A.
There was no interest at
the time in excavating, but in
the 1830s the restored Bourbon
monarchs tunneled through parts
of the villa at Torre
Annunziata.
Fortunately they
uncovered only a part of the
eastern peristyle and of the
slave quarters.
It was not until 1964
that the Italian Ministry of
Culture, with funds provided by
the state to develop industry
and tourism, decided to uncover
the villa.
The excavations were
deeper than at Pompeii, where
the volcanic fill rarely exceeds
15 feet.
Under the direction of
Alfonso De Franciscis,
and later
Stefano De Caro, these
excavations had to go down more
than 8 meters to recover the
remains of the villa.
Excavations continued into the
early eighties, including work
on the gardens by Wilhelmina
Jashemski (University of
Maryland), who studied the
structure of the gardens and
engaged paleobotanists to study
the plant material.
The paleobotanical
project not only studied the
root cavities of trees and
bushes; it also employed pollen-
and seed-flotation analysis to
determine what kinds of plants
were growing at villa at the
time of the eruption.
The Villa
When excavations ceased over
twenty years ago, excavators had
failed to find the limits of the
villa.
In
addition to the cut made across
the south portion of the villa
by the Sarno Canal, the
foundations of the
sixteenth-century mill (later to
become a modern pasta factory)
destroyed evidence for the
continuation of the villa to the
south.
To the west, a busy
modern street and a military
compound built into the former
arms factory have all but
negated any possibility of
future excavation.
Yet the excavated parts
of the villa, comprising 98
discrete spaces ranging from
small rooms to a 60 meter
swimming pool, reveal one of the
most extravagant Roman villas on
the Bay of Naples.
The villa is perhaps best known
for its extraordinary examples
of Second-Style decorative
ensembles which can be found in
several rooms centered around
the Second-Style atrium (5),
including a
cubiculum (11), a
triclinium (14), and two
oeci (15 and 23). Identified
as Phase 2B of the SecondStyle,
these rooms mark the oldest part
of the villa, dating to circa 50
BCE.
To the northwest of the
atrium, the owners added a
Third-Style bath complex (1-15
CE) centered on a small fountain
peristyle; this suite of rooms
was later remodeled into a
series of entertainment rooms
during the Fourth-Style (after
45 CE).
To the east of the atrium, a
peristyle (32), painted in
Fourth-Style “zebra stripes”
served as the as the hub of the
villa’s slave activity.
Rooms surrounding it
included a lararium
(27), a latrine (48), and
both ground and upperstory
sleeping quarters.
At the southwest corner,
a tunnel (36), still just
partially excavated, may have
carried one out the villa to the
ancient sea shore. A massive
two-story hallway (46), lit by
clerestory windows from above,
led one from the slave area out
to the villa’s eastern wing.
This wing along the villa’s 60
meter swimming pool consisted of
a series of three grand
entertainment rooms separated by
painted garden rooms (complete
with central planters and open
to the sky).
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| Detail of Tabula Peutingeriana | |
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| Excavation of the Villa in 1973 | |
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| Plan of the Villa |
