The remains of this villa suburbana are so impressive in size and area that before they were first excavated the site was called Roma Vecchia ("Old Rome") by the locals as it seemed to have been at least a town and its history was unknown.

A grand terrace overlooking the Via Appia Nuova (which dates to 1784), beyond which the villa's grounds had extended, commands a fine view of the Castelli Romani district.

Among the most famous sculptures discovered in this period, currently preserved in the Vatican Museums, the Glyptothek of Monaco and in the Louvre and private collections are the so-called Braschi Aphrodite and two executions of the Boy with the Goose.

Between 1828 and 1829 the excavations were conducted by Antonio Nibby (who also made a topographical survey of the archaeological finds of the estate at that time), concentrated around the most evident ruins between the thermal baths and the so-called Maritime Theatre.

In 1998 - 2000 a campaign of systematic interventions was conducted (promoted by the Superintendence of Archaeological Heritage of Rome) aimed at further exploring and making the main features of the villa visitable.

The villa's earliest residential and reception areas of the Quintilii brothers are dated to the first decades of the 2nd century between the Hadrianic era and the reign of Marcus Aurelius.

This sector belongs to the original nucleus of the villa and the magnificence of the marble coverings still in place indicates that these rooms were a sumptuous reception area where the owners received guests.

This reception area was on the upper level and connected to the service rooms below (only partially excavated) by a porticoed corridor the walls of which were decorated with marble slabs and lintels in greco scritto and rosso antico.

Many are small but luxurious rooms for receiving and lodging guests and several have exceptionally well preserved polychrome mosaic floors with various decorative motifs, both black and white and coloured, all of which date to the 2nd century.

One of the best rooms still has an opus sectile floor made of Palombino, slate, and giallo antico marble, with remains of wall frescos and a hypocaust heating system showing it was used in winter.

This complex of rooms closely connected in plan and structure with the public sector was partly built on the terrace above the basis villae substructure overlooking the scenic valley below and the ancient Via Latina, and perhaps above a private garden.

This structure was an admirable architectural solution by the adaptation of the building on different levels to the land consisting of a lava bank of the Capo di Bove flow.

[23] This elliptical building was earlier known as the “Maritime Theatre” (after that of Hadrian's Villa), but was originally a small amphitheatre or ludus built under Commodus for gladiators to train and perform and for animal hunts.

[24] These roughly 300 m-long covered porticoes lay at about 90 m from each other on each side of the vast garden to the southwest of the villa that must have been cultivated with trees and shrubs between pools and water.

The passage tunnel on the south-east side connected the monumental front of the nymphaeum with the long portico that bordered the southern xystus where the great statue of Niobe, on display today in the antiquarium, was discovered in the excavations of 2002-04.

Many statues and decorations, and a dolium filled with mosaic tiles of glass paste, were found abandoned near the portico showing that after the 4th century the area of the nymphaeum was used as a depository of various materials from the villa.

In 2018 excavations uncovered an extravagant and extraordinary winery and triclinium which features marble-clad instead of the usual opus signinum treading areas and a distribution system with fountains of wine that flowed from the production spaces down into the cellar.

[30] Triclinia (dining rooms) with wide entrances surrounded this winery area on three sides, their walls and floors covered in elaborate opus sectile with exotic marbles in geometrical patterns, indicating that the emperor entertained here around the theatrical spectacle of wine production.

[31] The monumental Quintilii aqueduct was built to supply the villa’s many baths, fountains, nymphaeum and gardens which required an enormous quantity of water.

It runs about 700 m on about 120 massive arches after which it reached a castellum aquae (distribution tank) at the 7th mile of the via Appia from where an underground conduit branched off to supply the villa.

[33] The medieval Casale di Santa Maria Nova was built over a Roman cistern alongside thermal baths and other buildings, as excavations since 2013 have shown.

In the baths two well-preserved monochrome mosaic floors on hypocausts are exceptional: one depicting a gladiator (a retiarius, carrying a net and trident) named Montanused with a referee in the act of awarding the victory; on the other, four horses race in pairs around a tree.

To the south-west of the main villa on a slight rise in the ground, stands a large concrete cistern that constituted the heart of the complex's water supply, served directly by a branch of the Quintilii aqueduct of which the bottom of the specus can still be seen along the external western side, where the inlet was located.