Excavations by the Italian Ministry of Culture at the ruins of the Villa dos Quintilii in Italy have revealed a luxurious wine cellar, including dining rooms overlooking fountains from which wine gushed.
Considered a miniature city, with a total of 24 hectares, Villa dos Quintilii has a vast history dating back to the 2nd century.
To its well-known sumptuous divisions -which have a theater, an arena for chariot races (an ancient Roman chariot drawn by two horses) and a complex of baths with walls and floors covered in marble- has now been added the discovery of a elaborate cava.
POSTED today in @AntiquityJ
A newly discovered LUXURY #Roman imperial cellar!
One of the most spectacular sites I’ve ever worked on.Highlight thread ft. decorative wine fountains and marble dining tables /1
FULL ARTICLE OPEN ACCESS https://t.co/hdee2tMBLW pic.twitter.com/sIqc2Jpq7t
-Dr. Emlyn Dodd (@emlynkd) April 17, 2023
The excavations, which ended up revealing this new space, were aimed at finding one of the starting points of the race track in the old town, built by the Emperor Commodus, who was in power between 177 and 192. The discovered cellar was built over one of the exit gates.
With several dining rooms overlooking wine-spurting fountains, the structure also includes marble-covered areas, where enslaved workers stomped on freshly picked fruit.
According to The Guardian newspaper, the winery was built in what was once a landscape of orchards and farmland, surrounded by other villas belonging to wealthy families.
“[A Villa dos Quintilii] It was an incredible miniature city complete with a luxury wine cellar so that the emperor himself could indulge in his Bacchic tendencies,” said archaeologist Emlyn Dodd, deputy director of the British School in Rome and an expert on ancient wine production.
Dodd also pointed out the recently excavated rectangular winegrowing areas in that town.
“Normally, these areas of passage [uvas] they would be covered with waterproof concrete,” he said. “But these were covered in red marble. Which isn’t ideal, as marble is incredibly slippery when wet. But it shows that whoever built this was prioritizing the extravagant nature of the winery over practical considerations.”
After being trodden, the crushed grapes were sent to two mechanical presses two meters in diameter. The resulting grape must was then poured into three fountains, which spouted from semicircular niches in a courtyard wall.
The grape must, after cascading down from the fountains, flowed along open channels into ceramic dolium, or storage jars, which were then placed on the ground, a winemaking technique common in ancient Rome that created a stable microenvironment for the fermentation process.
Dining rooms, with wide, open entrances, surrounded this cellar, a design that Dodd believes was put in place so that the Emperor could enjoy the spectacle of winemaking.
Of the various dining rooms, only one has been excavated, so the archaeologist expressed the desire to find funds to discover the rest.
The installation appears to have been built with both the practical issue of winemaking and its spectacle in mind.
The findings by archaeologists from the Italian Ministry of Culture were published in an article in the academic journal Antiquity.
Source: TSF
