place

Villa Poppaea

18th-century archaeological discoveriesArchaeological sites in CampaniaBuildings and structures completed in the 1st century BCFormer populated places in ItalyHarv and Sfn no-target errors
Poppaea SabinaRoman sites of CampaniaRoman villas in ItalyTorre AnnunziataTourist attractions in CampaniaVillas of PompeiiWorld Heritage Sites in Italy
Jardín Villa Poppaea 04
Jardín Villa Poppaea 04

The Villa Poppaea is an ancient luxurious Roman seaside villa (villa maritima) located in Torre Annunziata between Naples and Sorrento, in Southern Italy. It is also called the Villa Oplontis or Oplontis Villa A. as it was situated in the ancient Roman town of Oplontis. It was buried and preserved in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, like the nearby cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, about 10 m (33 ft) below modern ground level. The quality of the decorations and construction suggests that it was owned by the Emperor Nero, and a pottery shard bearing the name of a freedman of Poppaea Sabina, the second wife of the emperor Nero was found at the site, which suggests the villa may have been her residence when she was away from Rome and which gives it its popular name.It was sumptuously decorated with fine works of art. Its marble columns and capitals mark it out as being especially luxurious compared with others in this region that usually had stuccoed brick columns. Many artifacts from Oplontis are preserved in the Naples National Archaeological Museum. Parts of the villa lying under modern structures remain unexcavated.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Villa Poppaea (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Geographical coordinates (GPS)

Latitude Longitude
N 40.757222222222 ° E 14.4525 °
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Address

Villa Poppaea

Via Sepolcri
80058 , Rione Murattiano
Campania, Italy
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Jardín Villa Poppaea 04
Jardín Villa Poppaea 04
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Nearby Places

House of the Surgeon
House of the Surgeon

The House of the Surgeon is one of the most famous houses in the ancient Roman city of Pompeii and is named after ancient surgical instruments that were found there. Along with the rest of the city, it was buried and largely preserved under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash and pumice in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. It was excavated in 1770 by Francesco La Vega. It is modest in size and has little ornament or decoration externally but is strong and sturdy in build with its opus quadratum ashlar façade in Sarno stone, and opus africanum construction of the atrium courtyard. It was an elite residence as evidenced by the atrium being surrounded by rooms on all four sides and its rather exclusive vestibulum.For a long time, the house was thought to be one of the oldest examples in Pompeii with a date of the fourth–third century BC derived from the wall construction. However, in 1926 A. Maiuri made some excavations beneath the atrium which revealed an earlier layer of building rubble in which a late third century BC (214/212 BC) coin was found, which with the third–second century BC date of the earlier wall beneath the tablinum, suggests that the house is dated to no earlier than c.200 BC. However, the results were never published. In 2005, a further sub-79 AD-level excavation was made of the whole insula VI 1. It was shown that the atrium was modified in the 2nd century BC to provide more light to the interior, by adding a compluvium and accompanying impluvium to the previously full roof covering. The remainder of the house, however, was left mostly as it was, so it was indeed one of the earliest Italic-style houses found so far in Campania. In the final years of Pompeii, unlike its neighbour, the House of the Vestals, which had blossomed into one of the more luxurious homes in the area. the house seems to have been allowed to fall derelict as the floor between the atrium and tablinum had fallen into a large cistern below, wooden posts were inserted into the floors of many rooms to support a damaged roof, and one room was used as a lime-storage tank.