Roman villa with wine fountain for 'super elite' discovered in Italy

The ruins of an imperial property known as the Villa Quintilius, on the ancient Appian Way in Rome. Photo: Franco Tognarini/iStockphoto

A luxuriously decorated winery has been discovered in Rome, where grape juice flowed from fountains for the entertainment of the emperor.

Archaeologists say that the complex wine-growing complex is the most luxurious found in the Roman Empire, if not the entire ancient world.

The spectacle of grape juice gushing into sunken clay pots, where it fermented and turned into wine, could be a kind of «theatre» for the «super-elite» of Roman society.

The facade of the fountains was clad in white marble, and a stamp found in a huge vat indicates that the complex was built under Emperor Gordian III, a little-known ruler who ruled from 238 to 244 AD.

It was discovered during excavations. at the Villa Quintilius, a sprawling imperial palace complex on the Appian Way, one of the most famous roads of ancient Rome.

The villa is named after two brothers who served as consuls but were killed by the emperor Commodus, who confiscated the villa and declared it Imperial property.

Archaeologists were looking for traces of an ancient circus or chariot start gate, but instead stumbled upon a winery.

Remains of a rich winery excavated by archaeologists in Rome. Photo: S Castellani/Antiquity journal

The 3rd century AD winery was surrounded by three marble dining rooms where the emperor and his attendants dined while watching slaves, or perhaps wage laborers, trample freshly harvested grapes on the red marble floors.

Then the grape juice flowed through three fountains and through marble channels into huge clay amphoras dug into the ground in the cellar. Water poured from two other adjacent fountains.

“This is the most extravagant winery we have found in the Roman world and probably in the entire ancient world,” Emlyn Dodd, Associate Director of Archeology at the British School in Rome, an academic institute, told The Telegraph.

“No nothing like this. It would be a spectacle for the super-elite. It's quite remarkable.»

The discovery conjures up images of Bacchic feasts, but it's not clear if the emperor and his followers drank directly from the fountains.

“After all, it was grape juice – it wasn’t wine yet, and it wouldn’t be an alcoholic drink. But we can imagine the emperor reclining and dining while watching the wine being made,” said Dr. Dodd, an Australian archaeologist who specializes in ancient wine and olive oil.

Archaeologists don’t know what kind of wine it is. whether wine was produced or even whether it was red or white.

But half the cellar and two dining rooms remain unexplored, and archaeologists hope that if they can raise funds, they can dig up and find ancient traces of wine or grape DNA.

Presenting the results in the journal Antiquity, Dr. Dodd and two Italian archaeologists, Giuliana Galli and Riccardo Frontoni, stated that «winemaking was central to the cultural identity of the elite in many ancient Mediterranean societies.»

< p>The Roman elite «were fascinated by the theater of wine production.»

Wealthy Romans «cultivated a luxurious notion of simplicity, romanticizing the role of the rural worker.» and the glorification of the landowner as the master of nature,” the scientists wrote.