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- Overview
- Crazy rich ancient Romans
- End of the party
With the Roman empire’s best-preserved frescoes, Oplontis offers a glimpse into the lives of the era’s rich and famous.
Well-preserved frescoes at Villa A in Oplontis (present-day Torre Annunziata) provide a portal into the glories and scandals of ancient Rome.
When you get off the Circumvesuviana train one stop before Pompeii, at the city of Torre Annunziata, you will not be impressed. The map says you’re in a UNESCO World Heritage site in southern Italy, bundled with nearby Pompeii and Herculaneum, all buried in the A.D. 79 eruption of the Vesuvius volcano. Only a small sign points to “Scavi di Oplonti,” directing visitors past dull concrete buildings to a small ticket booth overlooking a pit of rectangular roofs.
But descend a metal stairway and walk through a colonnade—and suddenly you’re in a massive atrium, or entrance hall, of what was once a grand seaside villa. Frescoes of vibrant gold, cinnabar red, and Egyptian blue adorn the walls, with painted columns and decorations that create a dazzling three-dimensional effect. As you zigzag deeper, artists from thousands of years ago enchant with images of peacocks, sphinxes, a rosy cake on a pedestal, Greek temples, and a masterful still life of pomegranates in a glass bowl.
UNESCO’s proclamation states that the Oplontis villa has “the best-preserved wall paintings of the Roman period”—and yet you practically have the place to yourself. Only four minutes away by train are the ruins of Pompeii, one of the world’s most famous archaeological sites, where, pre-pandemic, 14,000 visitors a day traipsed around during high season.
Here in Oplontis, you’re rewarded with one of the most divine feelings travel can deliver—the flutter of discovering a hidden treasure.
The villa was certainly not hidden when it was built, around 50 B.C. Back then, before the Italian coastline was transformed by the massive lava flow from Mount Vesuvius’s eruption, it sat like a shining jewel on a high bluff, overlooking a beach and the Bay of Naples. Oplontis was part of a luxurious string of vacation properties built by wealthy Romans, which included the San Marco and Ariana villas, in Castellammare di Stabia, and Villa of the Papyri, in Herculaneum.
Cool ocean breezes, gentle hills, and fertile farmlands inspired this location’s name, Campania Felix (Happy Land). This was the ideal spot to indulge in otium—Latin for a style of leisure that combined rest, study, contemplation, exercise, and, of course, feasting and entertainment.
Here, Romans—who knew each other from their serious work in the city—could cut loose and also be seen with other high-status folks, creating an atmosphere somewhat like today’s Hamptons.
Party guests invited to Oplontis would arrive at the villa’s private port, then be escorted up ramps to be awestruck by the sheer expanse of the place—which would have been twice the size of the 99 currently excavated rooms, backed by vineyards and olive groves that sloped up to Mount Vesuvius. Once inside, an orchestrated interplay would ensue between guests and enslaved people, who would appear out of hidden alcoves to offer massages with precious ointments and perform acrobatic feats.
“I love how the wall paintings were designed to move people around the villa,” says art historian Regina Gee, of the University of Montana. “Frescoes of birds and lush plants bordering the pool inspired thoughtful strolling, while the interior zebra-striped hallways directed fast movement, useful for workers.”
(In ancient Rome, citizenship was the path to power.)
Festivities abruptly stopped when an A.D. 62 earthquake badly damaged Villa A. By the time of the Vesuvius eruption, pleasures there had been abandoned for 17 years. Unlike Herculaneum and Pompeii, which were excavated in the 18th century, Oplontis remained deeply buried, forgotten except for a few curious pokes during the Renaissance and in the 1700s when the bigger sites were explored.
(Recent archaeological finds reveal new clues to Pompeii’s destruction.)
It was not until 1964, when the Italian government thought uncovering Oplontis could be a good way to bring tourism to Torre Annunziata, that formal digging began. That late timing is one of the keys to the villa’s beauty; the vibrant frescoes escaped exposure to the elements that affected those older excavated sites. In addition, since its low-key public opening in the 1980s, Villa A hasn’t been harmed by waves of tourists.
Scholars, however, have become increasingly attracted to the site, thanks to the Oplontis Project, an American organization that has been studying and archiving the ruins since 2005. In addition to the villa, they’ve shed light on the history of Oplontis as a once thriving town, with thermal baths and a commercial complex that they call Villa B, where about 1,500 amphorae were found.
One of the most poignant discoveries in Villa B was a group of 54 skeletons of people believed to have been waiting for a ship to rescue them on that fateful day in A.D. 79. “The skeletons were found in two groups,” John Clarke, co-director of the Oplontis Project at the University of Texas at Austin, has said. “The first [group], near the entrance, were loaded with money and jewelry. The second, in the back, had no money, but lanterns and tools. It’s believed the second group were slaves, segregated, so sadly, from their masters, even in death.”
The Oplontis Project scholars collaborated with townspeople a few years ago to set up an exhibition of sculptures and artifacts found in the excavation storerooms. Locals were amazed to see treasures that they never knew existed—from exquisite marble statues of centaurs to glass vases and silver tableware.
- Susan Van Allen
The vast expanse of the commercial town of Pompeii contrasts with the smaller but better-preserved remains of the smaller Herculaneum, while Villa A in Torre Annunziata gives a vivid impression of the opulent lifestyle enjoyed by the wealthier citizens of the early Roman Empire.
Torre Annunziata (Italian: [ˈtorre annunˈtsjaːta]; Neapolitan: Torr'Annunziata) is a comune (municipality) in the Metropolitan City of Naples, in the Italian region of Campania. It is located on the Gulf of Naples, at the foot of Mount Vesuvius.
The site is archaeologically notable for the well-preserved paintings of its Villa Oplontis, which was an elite Roman residence. Together with Herculaneum and Pompeii, Torre Annunziata was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1997.
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