Living Large In 50 AD

At this link you can find an interesting report from Italian TV on the recent discovery of a large first century Roman villa in the center of the seaside Amalfi Coast resort of Positano which THC has visited several times (see related posts).  The remains of the villa were found during excavations under existing structures and, as you can see in the linked video, the degree of preservation of the interior room paintings is remarkable.

The video report is in Italian but from other sources it appears that the villa was built in either the first century BC or early first century AD.  It was likely abandoned after the massive eruption of Mt Vesuvius in 79AD which destroyed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum (see related post) possibly because ash fall from the volcano made the villa uninhabitable for its wealthy owner.  Nothing like this had previously been found in the Positano area and it is a further reminder that in recent decades archaeologists have discovered evidence that the Roman Empire, from Britain to Turkey, was much more densely populated than previously estimated.