Villa Settefinestre lies between

Capalbio Capalbio is a '' comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Grosseto in Tuscany region of Italy, located about south of Florence and about southeast of Grosseto. Capalbio borders the following municipalities: Manciano, Montalto di Castro, ...

and

Orbetello Orbetello is a town and '' comune'' in the province of Grosseto ( Tuscany), Italy. It is located about south of Grosseto, on the eponymous lagoon, which is home to an important Natural Reserve. History Orbetello was an ancient Etruscan sett ...

Tuscany it, Toscano (man) it, Toscana (woman) , population_note = , population_blank1_title = , population_blank1 = , demographics_type1 = Citizenship , demographics1_footnotes = , demographics1_title1 = Italian , demogra ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

, and is the site of a late Republican Roman slave-run

villa A villa is a type of house that was originally an ancient Roman upper class country house. Since its origins in the Roman villa, the idea and function of a villa have evolved considerably. After the fall of the Roman Republic, villas became ...

owned by the senatorial family of the Volusii, built in the 1st century BC and enlarged in the 1st century AD with a large ''cryptoportico.'' The villa was fortified at a later period and the fortress was rebuilt as a villa in the more modern sense in the 15th century. It was excavated during 1976-1981 under the direction of

Andrea Carandini Andrea Carandini (born November 3, 1937) is an Italian professor of archaeology specialising in ancient Rome. Among his many excavations is the villa of Settefinestre. Biography The son of Italian diplomat Count Nicolò Carandini (1896–1 ...

and very thoroughly published. Villa Settefinestre itself was rehabilitated in the 1970s as a luxury holiday rental property, with the ruins, open to the public, picturesquely incorporated in the garden plan. The villa was located in the ''Ager Cosanus'' in the vicinity of

Cosa Cosa was a Latin colony founded in southwestern Tuscany in 273 BC, on land confiscated from the Etruscans, to solidify the control of the Romans and offer the Republic a protected port. The Etruscan site (called ''Cusi'' or ''Cosia'') may have ...

, a Latin '' colonia'' founded in 273 BC. The area was linked to

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

by the

Via Aurelia The ''Via Aurelia'' (Latin for "Aurelian Way") is a Roman road in Italy constructed in approximately 241 BC. The project was undertaken by Gaius Aurelius Cotta, who at that time was censor.Hornblower, Simon, & Antony Spawforth. ''The Oxford Cl ...

. Cosa suffered a crisis in the

Roman Republican civil wars This is a list of civil wars and organized civil disorder, revolts and rebellions in ancient Rome (Roman Kingdom, Roman Republic, and Roman Empire) until the fall of the Western Roman Empire (753 BCE – 476 CE). For the Eastern Roman Empire or B ...

and became depopulated. In its stead, a group of great villas were assembled in the area, run by slave labor not unlike the '' latifundia'' holdings typical of southern Italy. The villa at Settefinestre was not the

peristyle In ancient Greek and Roman architecture, a peristyle (; from Greek ) is a continuous porch formed by a row of columns surrounding the perimeter of a building or a courtyard. Tetrastoön ( grc, τετράστῳον or τετράστοον, lit=f ...

villa described by

Pliny the Elder Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/2479), called Pliny the Elder (), was a Roman author, naturalist and natural philosopher, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic ' ...

or to be seen at

Herculaneum Herculaneum (; Neapolitan and it, Ercolano) was an ancient town, located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. Like the n ...

, filled with sculpture, mosaic floors and fine paintings. Nor was it in any way like the Imperial villas round the

Bay of Naples A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a gulf, sea, sound, or bight. A cove is a small, circular bay with a na ...

, of course, though the sea is visible from its site. This was Roman agrobusiness: instead of fine mosaics, a wealth of Roman tools have been recovered here (''Settefinestre'' vol. III). "Settefinestre has been taken as an example of how the advice of Roman agricultural writers like

Columella Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella (; Arabic: , 4 – ) was a prominent writer on agriculture in the Roman Empire. His ' in twelve volumes has been completely preserved and forms an important source on Roman agriculture, together with the wo ...

and

Varro Marcus Terentius Varro (; 116–27 BC) was a Roman polymath and a prolific author. He is regarded as ancient Rome's greatest scholar, and was described by Petrarch as "the third great light of Rome" (after Vergil and Cicero). He is sometimes calle ...

were put into practice. "It is truly remarkable how well this villa, with its extensive repertoire of buildings and forms, instantiates the accounts of the Roman agronomists: the best example of Varro's ''villa perfecta'' (I, 194). In detail after detail the advice of Varro and Columella is to be found in practice here" (Purcell, reviewing the published official reports). The commercial product of Roman Villa Settefinestre was wine. Aside from the villa at Settefinestre, there are remains of comparable contemporary villas at Cap Colonne and

Provincia A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman '' provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

. The exemplary archaeological excavations at Settefinestre have been taken as a starting point for the new phase of science-supported field archaeology in Italian work that is providing a more detailed study of the occupation history of the Roman countryside and moves beyond the antiquarian tradition of villa-studies.''Bryn Mawr Classical Review'' 2004.04.25 Stephen L. Dyson, The Roman Countryside. London: Duckworth, 2003. Pp. 128. . £10.99. http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2004/2004-04-25.html

Sources

*''Settefinestre: Una Villa Schiavistica Nell'Etruria Romana'' edited A. Carandini and A Ricci, (Modena, 1985) : several lavish volumes present the detailed report of the archaeology. *Annalisa Marzano, ''Roman Villas in Central Italy: A Social and Economic History.'' (Brill, 2007)

References

External links

Via AureliaMaria Letizia Gualandi. "SETTEFINESTRE" In ''Enciclopedia Italiana - V Appendice'' (1994).
{{Coord, 42, 25, 50.14, N, 11, 19, 36.32, E, source:itwiki_type:landmark_region:IT, display=title Roman villas in Italy Archaeological sites in Tuscany Orbetello Capalbio