Villa Commedia

About

Pliny's Comedy and Tragedy villas were two of the several villas owned by Pliny the Younger during the 1st century in the area surrounding Lake Como in northern Italy. In one of Pliny's letters to his boyhood friend Voconius Romanus (Book 9, Epistle 7), he named them as his favourites. In his letter, Pliny wrote that the Tragedy villa was atop a ridge above the lake, but the Comedy villa was right on the water's edge and that "each of them has particular beauties; a diversity which renders them to their master as still more agreeable." According to the letter, Pliny had derived the villas' names from their geographical positions and the conventions of Roman theatre.

He saw the Tragedy villa as rising from its setting like an actor wearing the tragedian's high platform boots (cothurni), while the Comedy villa down by the lake wore the lowly comedian's slippers (socculi). Both villas have long since vanished, and their exact locations remain a subject of speculation. Although the Tragedy villa is widely assumed to have been located in Bellagio somewhere on the estate of the present-day Villa Serbelloni, no architectural remains have ever been found.

It is even less clear where the Comedy...