Villa Boscoreale

• 1. Introduction

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  Villa Boscoreale sits in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, and everything found there was preserved by the same catastrophe that destroyed it. In 79 AD, the eruption that buried Pompeii and Herculaneum also entombed a cluster of Roman villas in the district of Boscoreale, Italy. They were sealed under volcanic ash and pyroclastic material for nearly two thousand years. What waited inside ranged from a chest holding a thousand gold coins to frescoes now considered the finest Roman painted walls ever discovered. How did working farms come to contain some of the ancient world's most exquisite art? What happened to the treasures pulled from the ground? And why, after being excavated, were most of these villas simply reburied? Those are the questions that run through the story of Boscoreale.

• 2. A Region Built on Agriculture

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  Campania, the region surrounding Boscoreale, was known across the Roman world for its agricultural output, particularly wine and olive oil. The villas here were classified as villae rusticae, working estates oriented around production rather than pure leisure. Yet their owners clearly had wealth and refined taste. Many of these farms were embellished with frescoes and luxury goods that would have suited an urban mansion. The tension between the practical and the opulent runs through every excavation in the district. Several of the Boscoreale villas were dug up toward the end of the 19th century, not by archaeologists but by treasure hunters. Once stripped of valuables, those villas were simply covered over again. The one exception is the Villa Regina, discovered in 1977, which was treated as an archaeological site from the start and preserved intact for visitors to see today.

• 3. Villa Regina: A Farm Preserved

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  In 1977 excavators reached the Villa Regina after cutting through approximately 26 feet, or about 8 meters, of compressed volcanic ash and pyroclastic material, with centuries of ordinary ground buildup on top. What emerged was not a grand estate but a comfortable working farm, its central courtyard colonnaded on three sides with columns of red and white stucco. Large quantities of pottery and farm implements were recovered. Plaster casts were made from the hollow spaces where the original entrance doors had rotted away. A plaster cast of a pig killed in the catastrophe was also produced from a void in the ash. Near the center of the villa, the wine cellar held 18 dolia with a combined capacity of 10,000 liters, used to store must from the adjoining press. Pollen analysis later identified dozens of plant species at the site, including birch, hazelnut, cypress, walnut, olive, anemone, borage, and geranium, among others. The holes in the ground left by the roots of Roman vines were found, and vines have since been replanted in those same holes. An oil lamp found at the site dated from the 3rd to 5th century AD, showing that someone tunnelled into the buried ruins during the later Roman period, centuries after the eruption.

• 4. The Villa of Fannius Synistor

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  Evidence in tablets and graffiti suggests the Villa of Publius Fannius Synistor was built around 40-30 BC. It was privately discovered, excavated, partially dismantled, and reburied in 1900. Despite its relatively modest size and the absence of an atrium, pool, or sculpture collection, it housed frescoes described as the highest quality Roman painted walls ever found. The villa had three stories, a bath suite, an underground passage to a stable, and a central living floor of over thirty rooms surrounding a peristyle. The main entrance was reached by five broad steps leading to a colonnaded forecourt. Ownership has been disputed. Bronze tablets bearing the name Lucius Herennius Florus were excavated inside the villa, suggesting he may have held title, while Publius Fannius Synistor is also confirmed as a resident. Both are identified as owners in the early 1st century BC and 1st century AD. The frescoes were later auctioned off after removal and are now scattered across institutions around the world. The figures in them carry clear qualities of Greek Hellenism: philosophers such as Epicurus, Zeno, and Menedemus appear alongside possible representations of kings, including King Kinyras of Cyprus. At a moment when the Roman Republic was ending and classical Greek style was fading from fashion, Greek imagery in the home was apparently considered sophisticated. The frescoes survived the eruption partly because the painters used no organic pigments such as indigo, murex purple, or red madder. The reddening of some yellow ochre in the works shows that temperatures exceeded 300 degrees Celsius during the eruption.

• 5. Reconstructing the Cubiculum

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  One bedroom from the Villa of Fannius Synistor, known as a cubiculum diurnum, has been reassembled at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where it has been a feature of the Roman Gallery since 2007 and a holding of the museum since 1903. The facing long walls measure 19 feet, or 5.8 meters, and are mirror images of each other, likely produced by transfer, with variations. Each long wall is divided into four panels by painted columns. The murals represent an open architectural world above socle height: columns, buildings, landscape views, garden scenes, and religious statues appear to extend beyond the physical walls. No human figures appear; only a few birds occupy the short window wall. A second room, known as Room M, uses painted columns that seem to expand into another room, giving the impression of an almost unending space. Depth is built through overlapping surfaces, foreshortening, diminution, and strong aerial perspective, though without consistent vanishing points. Pompeian red on the foreground planes contrasts with the cooler blue tones of the background, adding another cue for depth. Archaeologist Felice Barnabei drew notes and plans at the time of excavation in 1902. Research by Phyllis W. Lehmann in 1953 and axonometric drawings by Maxwell Anderson in 1987 followed. The Metropolitan Museum, together with King's College London, is now building a virtual model of the villa that links the scattered frescoes using all of these sources.

• 6. The Boscoreale Treasure

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  The Villa della Pisanella was first uncovered by its landowners across several seasons beginning in 1876. In 1894 excavations revealed a villa rustica covering 1,000 square meters, with a residential sector including baths and a working area with farm buildings and warehouses. What the rooms contained at the moment of the eruption told a fragmented story. A large chest held forty keys and silver tableware. In the kitchen lay the skeleton of a dog still on its chain. In the stable were the bones of several tethered horses, one of which had managed to free itself before dying. In the olive pressing room, known as the torcularium, the first three human skeletons came to light. Among them was a woman wearing gold earrings set with topaz jewels. She has been called Maxima, a name written on many of the silver vessels, and has been described by some as the last owner of the villa. In 1895 in that same torcularium, a chest was found containing the so-called Boscoreale Treasure: 102 items in all, including silver tableware, bracelets, earrings, rings, and a double gold chain. A thousand gold coins remained in the remnants of a leather bag. The chest may have been placed in what was considered the safest room in the villa at the moment of eruption. All of these treasures were smuggled out of Italy to France via the Rothschild family and sold. The excavations at the villa resumed in 1896 under Angiolo Pasqui, and the silver pieces are today held across several major museums.