Photo: Effems · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Villa romana di San Biagio

Late Republican and Imperial Roman villa at Terme Vigliatore, with a reception hall with an opus sectile floor, mosaics and a bath complex.

Opening hoursFree admission

Directions

About the museum

The Roman villa of San Biagio was built between the end of the 2nd and the beginning of the 1st century BC on a site already inhabited in the Hellenistic period (3rd–2nd century BC). It underwent at least two restorations or reorganisations in the early Imperial period, in the mid-1st and the 2nd century AD, with changes mainly to the bath sector. The presence of late pottery and of rooms built with reused materials, which emerged in the excavations of the eastern sector, suggests continuous occupation into late antiquity.

In the centre of the southern side opened the large tablinum, a reception room with a façade of two columns and a niche in the back wall, perhaps intended for a statue; here stands out the opus sectile floor with hexagonal panels of marble and mosaic, datable to around the 2nd century AD. From the tablinum one entered three private rooms with black and white mosaics.

In the south-western sector are the bath installations with changing rooms, frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium, enlarged in the 2nd century with larger and more comfortable rooms; the frigidarium retains a black and white mosaic with a fishing scene. The site, managed by the Parco archeologico di Tindari, is the subject of a €3.5 million redevelopment project that provides new routes, new services and an Antiquarium.

Highlights

Tablinum with opus sectile floor and mosaic
Private rooms with black and white mosaics
Bath complex with frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium
Mosaic with a fishing scene in the frigidarium
Phases from the Hellenistic period to late antiquity

Operated by: Regione Siciliana – Parco archeologico di Tindari
Visitors per year: approx. 1,899