PARCO ARCHEOLOGICO DI MORGANTINA

 
Parco archeologico di Morgantina
Veduta aerea dell'area archeologica

The Park

The archaeological park of Morgantina is a rare case in Sicily of abandoned city (life ends in the 1st century AD). The city did not suffer all those transformations due to historical superimpositions. The area still being excavated, the visitable part includes the public area with monuments from the Hellenistic period. Inside the archaeological park there is a theatre and a series of houses more or less rich and important. The park also consists of thermal buildings from the Hellenistic period, among the earliest known examples well before those known from the Roman world.

Archaeological area of Villa del Casale

The Regional Museum established in 1991, has been on the World Heritage List since 1997. A "sublime example of a luxurious Roman villa, graphically illustrating the prevalence of the social and economic structures of its time". It thus became one of the most visited Unesco sites in Sicily. The complex in the heart of a huge Roman latifundium estate, included the private residence of the dominus, representation spaces and spaces for the administration of the estates (the so-called pars fructuaria still to be investigated). In 1950sAfter its discovery, a pioneering restoration was carried out with a roof that gave an idea of the architectural volumes of the villa. These, articulated inside by differentiated paths, adapt to the environment and the nature of the land.

 

The routes extend over three levels: 1) monumental entrance and baths, 2) peristyle and adjacent rooms 3) ambulatory of the great hunt, basilica and master's flats. The decorative apparatus, from the marbles in opus sectile which decorated the walls and floor of the basilica to its 3500 square metres of mosaic floor surfaces made by North African craftsmen, depict a remarkable array of iconographies typical of the late 3rd and first half of the 4th century AD. These realistic scenes celebrate the figure of the dominus (adventus or small hunt). They are reminiscent of Rome and its circus shows (the great hunt and the gymnasium with the horse races). Mythological mosaics, on the other hand, refer to a precise conception of the life of the patron/owner of the Villa.

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