Roman villa of Quintus Axius

From the 2nd century BC the landscape of the region saw the abandonment of the ancient Samnite residential areas and the construction of imposing villae rusticae, farm-villas that changed the territorial structure.

The farms on these estates typically produced lucrative crops that were sold to the cities including olives, grapes (for wine), and even game or other edible luxuries such as snails, fish, and small birds.

Axius had two villas in the area: this one "at Reate (Rieti)" which Appius described as "elaborate" with "citrus wood or gold, with vermillion and azure, and any coloured or mosaic work",[8] yet "never a painter or fresco-worker has seen" as it was more important as a bird-farming estate, and where he had stayed and feasted on exotic birds.

[9] Other information on the villa comes from another friend of Axius, Cicero, the orator who, in 54 BC, was called to defend the nearby city of Reate in one of the countless lawsuits brought against them by the citizens of Interamna Nahars (now Terni) regarding the diatribe over the “Marmore issue”.

To remove that threat of malaria to Reate, the Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus had ordered the construction in 271 BC of a canal (the Curiano Trench) to divert the water from the marshes in the Rieti Valley and from Lake Velino over the natural cliff at Marmore, creating the waterfall, the tallest man-made one in the world.

A survey in the surrounding land led to the identification of a series of ancient hypogea, which probably were related to structures of the villa and which must have given rise to the toponym “Grotte di San Nicola”.