North-western sector of the great Villa of Domitian, the largest archaeological complex at the Circeo (about 46 hectares), which occupies the peninsula overlooking Lake Sabaudia. In this area, arranged around a large rectangular fishpond with an apse and lined with white marble, a portico runs along three sides of the basin, with further residential rooms behind it. The villa, still largely buried under vegetation and not fully excavated, now lies within a strict nature reserve of the National Park and can be visited only along marked routes.
The visit continues northwards, where the oldest structures survive, predating Domitian’s redevelopment. In the central part of the route are the monumental cisterns, notable for their size, designed to provide the villa with abundant water for the baths, the various pools and fishponds and all the activities needed to run an imperial residence.
Archaeological investigations, which have been going on at the Villa of Domitian for almost a century, have uncovered as many as six cisterns. The best known are the Pillared Cistern, belonging to the first building phase and dated between the 2nd and 1st centuries BC; the Collecting Cistern and the Echo Cistern, belonging to the third, pre-Domitian phase and dated to the end of the 1st century BC; and the Cistern of the Ships, named after the evocative graffiti on its inner walls, the work of a skilled but unknown man who, by drawing moored ships, left us a sort of snapshot of the ancient view of Lake Paola.
The Echo Cistern is certainly worth a visit. Once inside, descending almost into the belly of a whale, you are struck by the perfect echo returned by the walls, which are in excellent condition. Its size too (a full 60 metres long) is astonishing and gives an idea of the unlimited quantity of water that supplied not only baths and pools but also kitchens, irrigation systems, sewers, fountains, nymphaea and many other activities.
The Echo Cistern has two naves, divided by massive pillars, and in the centre you can see the impluvium, the opening through which rainwater entered. Inside it is lined with cocciopesto, a special hydraulic mortar used on all structures in contact with water. It was also connected to the aqueduct: the villa’s water network was fed by two aqueducts at Molella, which carried spring water from the Lepini Mountains.
Continuing north-west you reach the last area uncovered in the imposing Imperial Villa: the Apsed Basin area. This area has the highest concentration of structures belonging to a late Republican villa, and it was here that Domitian’s architects showed great ingenuity, managing to integrate the monumental structures of the earlier complex into the sumptuous new residence.
The dominant architectural features are the Great Fishpond, the Quadriporticus and the Pillared Cistern mentioned above, the main water reserve of the late Republican villa. Excavations have made it possible to produce an accurate 3D reconstruction of the area. An imposing quadriporticus, decorated with wall frescoes imitating marble and a floor mosaic of tiny white tesserae, ran around the Pool and opened onto the Lake with a colonnade. Around the pool, used for breeding fish but also with a clear aesthetic function, there was probably a garden.
With Domitian’s redevelopment, all these spaces were enhanced by a rich decorative scheme, now largely lost: opus sectile floors, splendid wall and floor mosaics, stucco ceilings, frescoed walls, and many statues and decorative sculptures, irretrievably lost after centuries of neglect and abandonment. Among the statues “saved”, three busts are now in the Civic Museum of Terracina, a “Young Faun Playing the Flute” can be admired in the Gallery of the Candelabra in the Vatican Museums, while the marvellous Apollo of the Parnopios type (locust hunter) is in Kassel, Germany.
