Villa of the Quintilii

About

The Villa of the Quintilii (Italian: Villa dei Quintili) is a monumental ancient Roman villa beyond the fifth milestone along the Via Appia Antica just outside the traditional boundaries of Rome, Italy. It was built by the rich and cultured Quintilii brothers Sextus Quintilius Valerius Maximus and Sextus Quintilius Condianus (consuls in 151 AD). The ruins of this villa suburbana are of such an extent that when they were first excavated, the site was called Roma Vecchia ("Old Rome") by the locals, as they occupied too great a ground, it seemed, to have been anything less than a town.

The nucleus of the villa was constructed in the time of Hadrian. The villa included extensive thermae fed by its own aqueduct and, what was even more unusual, a garden-hippodrome, which dates to the fourth century, when the villa was Imperial property: the emperor Commodus coveted the villa strongly enough to put to death its owners in 182 and confiscate it for himself. In 1776 Gavin Hamilton, the entrepreneurial painter and purveyor of Roman antiquities, excavated some parts of the Villa of the Quintilii, still called "Roma Vecchia", and the sculptures he uncovered revealed the imperial nature of the site...