Piazza Armerina trip planner

The mosaicked ruins of a Roman villa in the heart of Sicily

In the hamlet of Casale outside the nondescript small city of Piazza Armerina lies one of the greatest sights in Sicily.

The ★★ Villa Romana del Casaleis the excavated remains of an AD 4th-century villa whose 40 rooms are carpeted with some 37,800 square feet of the most extensive, gorgeous, and colorful ancient Roman mosaics in western Europe.

This was the hunting lodge of Maximianus, Diocletian's co-emperor, and the remarkable mosaics were probably the work of north African craftsmen.

They're remarkable not only for their Technicolor variety and sheer extent of preservation (buried and forgotten for centuries under a mudslide), but also for their masterful craftsmanship.

Amusingly, many of the scenes are what you might expect in an ancient bachelor's pad: spectacular hunting parties, "pinup models" in bikinis playing games, and bare-bottomed couples smooching.

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