Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Villa Romana del Casale is located about 3 km from the town of Piazza Armerina in Sicily. The nearby settlement of Philosophiana, about 6 km from the villa, served as the commercial centre of the estate.
A landslide buried the villa in the 12th century after the settlement was destroyed, sealing the mosaic floors under mud and rubble for hundreds of years. That accidental burial protected the floors from damage and allowed their colours to survive.
The visible remains of the villa were constructed in the first quarter of the 4th century AD, built over the foundations of an earlier country residence that probably dates to around the beginning of the 2nd century.
The owner's identity has not been confirmed. Some scholars propose the emperor Maximian based on Tetrarchic military imagery in the mosaics; others argue the villa was the seat of a very senior senatorial aristocrat who managed the surrounding agricultural estate.
The Room of the Ten Maidens, known in Italian as the Sala delle Dieci Ragazze, contains a mosaic excavated by Gino Vinicio Gentili in 1959-60. It shows women athletes competing in weight-lifting, discus throwing, running, and ball-games, wearing two-piece outfits closely resembling modern bikinis.
UNESCO designated the Villa Romana del Casale as a World Heritage Site in 1997. The site was cited for having the richest, largest, and most varied collection of Roman mosaics that survives anywhere.