La Olmeda

About

The palatial Late Antique Roman villa at La Olmeda is situated in Pedrosa de la Vega in the province of Palencia (Castile and León, Spain), near the banks of the Carrión. Long known as the provenance of chance finds, it was finally professionally excavated from 1968, and was declared a Bien de Interés Cultural, 3 April 1996. The site was donated in 1984 to the Diputación de Palencia by its proprietor and discoverer, Javier Cortes Álvarez de Miranda, who had supported the archaeological investigation of the site from 1969 to 1980.

It is open to the public, while a museum dedicated to the finds is housed in the nearby church of San Pedro de Saldaña. The agrarian villa was developed in several stages, from the first to the third century AD, with major reconstruction in the fourth century and extending in use at least to the end of the fifth. The villa complex centers on the elite quarters of rigorously symmetrical disposition, wherein twenty-seven rooms, twelve with mosaic floors, are disposed around a central patio crossed with mosaic paths in geometric patterns and linked round its perimeter by a wide peristyle.

This main building housed the poentior, with its oecus or reception hall...