The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD helped preserve the Villa Oplontis, which excavations have revealed to be an elite Roman holiday home rather than a permanent residence. Notable features include baths, cubicula, triclinia and frescos, indoor and outdoor gardens, a guest suite and an outdoor swimming pool.

Overview of Villa Oplontis

Located in modern Torre Annunziata, the Villa Oplontis is one of two elite villas belonging to Roman Oplontis, a small town named on the Tabula Peutingeriana, an ancient map of Roman imperial roads.

After its discovery in 1964, archaeologists spent twenty years excavating and studying the complex. What was revealed was an elite home used as a summer retreat rather than a permanent residence. 

The style and scale of the villa suggested it was an important residence, and it has been linked to Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the Emperor Nero, whose hometown was nearby Pompeii.

The house was built in two phases. The oldest part of the house is in a classical atrium style, dating to the mid-first century AD. This remained the core residential area throughout the villa’s history.

Later, the house was extended. This new wing was primarily recreational, centring on the swimming pool and extensive northern gardens. Overlooking the pool was a series of guest suites, each with its own sitting rooms. These improvements were still in progress at the time of Vesuvius’s eruption.

The Atrium and Reception Rooms

The main reception room or atrium lay in the original residence. It had the traditional roof opening, the compluvium, which allowed rainwater to collect in a central pool, the impluvium. 

The atrium was a vast room decorated to impress residential guests and clients; its perspective increased by visual devices. The walls were painted with second-style murals, which incorporated landscapes and mythological scenes into a framework of columns and porticos. This had the effect of making the room feel bigger than it was.

 Immediately opposite the entrance to the atrium were folding doors that opened to reveal a small peristyle garden, adding to the sense of space within the villa.

Bedrooms and the Guest Suite

The most private area of the villa was arguably a person’s bedroom or cubiculum. There were two sets of cubicula in the villa: those in the main house and those in the guest suite.

The Main House. Here, bedrooms followed the traditional pattern of the roman house and were grouped around the atrium. The rooms included alcoves for beds, but there would have been little more furniture in these small rooms. They were, however, lavishly decorated with second-style frescos. 

The eruption of Vesuvius preserved the folding window shutters of these rooms and their petrified remains remain today as they were at the time of the eruption: half open to allow in air.

The Guest Bedrooms. These rooms were more plainly decorated in blocks of colour: white at the top and yellow, red or black at the bottom. Each room had its own sitting room, with niches for statues. Connecting each bedroom and sitting room was a small viridarium.

The Roman Gardens — Peristyle Gardens and Viridarii

A viridarium was a small enclosed internal garden. In the Villa Oplontis, the walls of the viridarii were painted with intricate horticultural scenes, while interior windows allowed vistas onto each guest’s sitting rooms and bedrooms.

Other gardens were found throughout the villa. To the east of the atrium was the original large peristyle garden. Confined by the house, with collonaded porticos on three sides, it was probably the private retreat of the owners, unlike the enormous northern gardens.

This area was landscaped and formed the setting for the villa’s swimming pool. Sculpture would have flanked the 61 x17m pool, which was tilted at the south end to allow water to drain away when the pool was emptied. A portico ran along the western side, facing onto the guest suites, allowing visitors wonderful views as well as easy access to the facilities.

The Summer and Winter Triclinia

The location of the pool suggests that the guest suite was not just a place to house guests; it was also a place to entertain them. This picture is completed by the discovery of a triclinium in the guest suite extension. 

This room was intended to impress and opened up to the northern gardens.  

The guest triclinium, however, would not have eclipsed the triclinia of the main house. Situated to the far west of the atrium, a small internal winter dining room opened into the summer triclinium. This room had a large door that opened onto views of the sea. A second-style mural portrayed architectural features that served as frames for motifs such as peacocks, theatrical masks and emblems of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi. The mural, which is remarkable undamaged, is still impressively vibrant.

Roman Baths and Ancillary Rooms

The far northwest of the house was dedicated to ancillary features such as the kitchen. The servant’s quarters were not in a separate wing but a series of rooms near the household lararium. They included a small internal peristyle garden and fountain whose simple decor showed it was part of the service areas.

The bath suite was also in the northwest quarter. It had two rooms: the caldarium (hot room) and tepidarium (warm room). In the hot room, tegulae mammatae — hollow terracotta slabs incorporated into the walls joined with suspensurae — brick pillars supporting the floor to create a conduit for warm air that would have flowed around the whole room. To ensure a cooler temperature, the warm room only had under-floor heating. However, both rooms were decorated in yellow, red and black in second-style frescos.

And the toilets? They were in the northeast of the old house, well away from the public rooms but connected to the new wing of the house, making them accessible to guests and residents alike.

Resources

Guide to Oplontis by Soprintendenza Archaologica Di Pompeii