Villa of Domitian (Sabaudia)

[1] The enormous estate occupies a beautiful site over almost an entire peninsula of 45 hectares, mostly unexcavated and a protected area in the Circeo National Park.

It was one of his numerous villas in Italy including those at Castel Gandolfo, Tusculum, Antium, Caieta, Anxur, Vicarello and Baiae.

An army of convicts was used to knock down walls and prepare building material, while porters transported them to the work site at lake Paola.

Another mission by the Papal States in 1798 undertaken by Petrini had the aim of looting works of art for profit and led to the discovery of about 29 statues including the Vatican Faun.

Pio Capponi, inspector of monuments from 1877 to 1891, witnessed the habit of the tenants of the villa, which was leased by the Municipality of Terracina, of carrying out "frequent excavations" among which Gregorio Antonelli, elder brother of Pius IX's Secretary of State, stands out and about whom La Blanchére writes: “... Antonelli exploited the immense ruins of Paola as a mine of art objects to be sold".

Today, due to dumps of earth from early excavations and the extensive planting of pine trees in the 1940s which are endangering the surviving ruins of the villa underground with their roots and on the surface, only three parts of the villa are visible:[8] The baths building has an imposing façade along the western shore of the peninsula with grandiose quays, interrupted only by two porticoed exedras near the thermal baths.

Here Domitian's architects showed their supreme ingenuity by integrating the earlier monumental structures into the new sumptuous palace.

The central zone includes part of the villa’s agricultural buildings, with a fullonica (a fuller's) and a water supply system[9] with large cisterns that re-used earlier ones.