La villa of Desenzano was situated at the foot of a hillside slope and the beach was only a few meters away from it. Today, anyone who wants to have an overall view of the villa must use their imagination to bring out from the ruins the structures of the large and distinct blocks of buildings dating back to the early 4th century AD, and not consider, in this first approach, all those elements that belong to residences of earlier periods, whose remains, arranged on lower levels, can be glimpsed here and there. At the entrance of the villa there is a small museum that displays materials from the excavations in three rooms: among these are remains of statues and very interesting portraits as well as a crusher for pressing grapes or olives. The villa consists of three sectors (A, B, C). Sector A is arranged along an east-west axial direction: to the east there is an octagonal vestibule (1), from which one once accessed the beach and, probably, the small harbor; from the vestibule you enter the peristyle (2), an inner courtyard that was surrounded on all sides by porticoes and adorned with statues; from the peristyle you access the atrium with a double entrance (3) and then the triclinium (4), which was a representative room with three apses. The triclinium was covered by a dome or barrel vault. The rooms and the peristyle were floored with mosaics that, with a variety of geometric patterns and vegetal motifs, created chromatic effects. Some surviving sections of this rich flooring can still be seen. In the atrium (3) there were four rectangles with mosaics depicting fishing scenes. Sector B underwent various transformations during the Roman period, from the Augustan age until the end of the 4th century AD, if not even the beginning of the 5th century AD. In this sector several rooms can be observed whose directional axis is arranged from east to west, like that of sector A. The residential rooms to the north (12a, 12b, 12c) have geometric mosaics whose style is linked to that of the mosaics in sector A. They therefore date back to the end of the 3rd century or beginning of the 4th century AD. Later, at the end of the 4th century, there was a restructuring in this sector, in the southern part: some rooms arranged around an apse (13) are noticed, which was at the end of a large, probably rectangular room, of which only a small section is known so far. The apse was paved with rhomboid tiles forming a design of cubes seen in perspective. The same motif continued with polychrome tiles in the room that was supposed to reach up to the beach. Sector C was among the most damaged by the excavation work carried out in the seventies. This new building, also oriented from east to west, had rooms with marble slab flooring and heating systems both under the floors and in the wall cavities. We are most likely facing rooms with thermal functions.
Information about the Roman Villa and Antiquarium
Via Crocefisso, 22
25015 Desenzano del Garda (Brescia)
0309143547
villaromana.desenzano@beniculturali.it
https://www.archeologica.lombardia.beniculturali.it
Source: MIBACT
