Archaeologists accidentally stumble on a luxurious Roman winery

The establishment had a number of opulent dining areas with a view of fountains spewing out young wine. The newly gathered fruit was likewise stamped down by slave laborers in marble-lined spaces, maybe with the emperor watching while he dined with his entourage.

“[The Villa of the Quintilii] was an amazing mini city completed by a luxury winery for the emperor himself to indulge his Bacchic tendencies,” said archaeologist Dr. Emlyn Dodd, assistant director at the British School at Rome and an expert on ancient wine production.

They found it accidentally

Published in the journal Antiquity, the archaeologists from the Italian Ministry of Culture accidentally found the ancient Roman vineyard. As they suggested, Emperor Commodus, who ruled from AD177 to AD192, constructed the chariot-racing course. It turned out that one of these starting gates had been covered by the subsequent winery.

“Usually these treading areas would be covered in a waterproof concrete,” Dodd said. “But these were covered in red marble. Which isn’t ideal, as marble gets incredibly slippery when wet. But it shows that whoever built this was prioritizing the extravagant nature of the winery over practical considerations.”

Around three sides of this spacious courtyard area were covered dining rooms with broad, open entrances. According to Dodd's theory, the emperor would have feasted and taken in the entire theatrical display of winemaking here.

The entire building appears to have been planned with both the practicality of making wine and the sheer theatricality of it in mind.

Letters from a former emperor, Marcus Aurelius, attest to his having feasted while observing the process of winemaking, possibly at a luxurious winemaking facility at the Villa Magna 30 miles to the south-east, which is the only comparable site in the archaeological record to the newly discovered winery.

Study abstract:

The elites of many past cultures have sought to romanticise agricultural labour—often the source of their wealth and hence their status. A recently discovered winery at the Villa of the Quintilii on the Via Appia Antica, near Rome, provides only the second known example from the Graeco-Roman world of an opulent wine production complex built to facilitate vinicultural ‘spectacle’. The authors present the architectural and decorative form of the winery and illustrate how the annual vintage was reimagined as ‘theatrical’ performance. Dating to the mid third century AD, the complex illuminates how ancient elites could fuse utilitarian function with ostentatious luxury to fashion their social and political status.