Quiet Quintili

I’m staying for two weeks in Rome, at an AirBnB on the Via Appia Nuova about half a kilometer from the remarkable ruins of the Villa dei Quintili, a site few tourists visit. It was a vast suburban complex built by two wealthy brothers in the middle of the second century CE, on a low hill by the Via Appia. The emperor Commodus was so envious he had the owners executed and confiscated the villa for himself. The most monumental sector was the bath complex, part of which you see here, the caldarium and tepidarium or hot and warm baths with their mosaic floorings. Beyond, you get a sense of the panoramas the villa would have had in its heyday; the residential areas are on even higher ground. The villa had its own aqueduct to supply the estate and baths with water.