Spanish archaeologists have uncovered some 4,000 new painting fragments at a Roman villa in Valencia, dating back to the second century CE.
The mural fragments are believed to have decorated various stately rooms at the Barberes Sud villa in the former Roman settlement of Alonís (Allon), near present-day Villajoyosa. This excavation was jointly overseen by the Empresa Alebus Patrimonio Histórico (Alebus Historical Heritage Company) and Servicio Municipal de Arqueología (Municipal Archaeology Service), according to the Vilamuseu in Villajoyosa, which announced the news.
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Their uncovering, across a 9,000-square-foot dig site, has allowed archaeologists to partially reconstruct the floor plan of the villa, which was built during the reign of Trajan and located near the road that connected Alonís to its territory.
The stately rooms, whose foundations were only known until recently, would have surrounded an open-air, porticoed space where the villa’s garden likely would have been. Additionally, the villa also included an area for industrial use and another patio that would have enjoined servant rooms.
Because the villa’s walls were built with rammed earth, they are believed to have collapsed, though one wall was preserved in its entirety despite the collapse. After the excavation of the mural fragments, the Vilamuseu and Empresa Alebus teams catalogued and numbered them in order to reconstruct their composition at the museum’s restoration laboratory.
Already, the team has been able to reconstruct 22 of the 866 fragments from that collapsed wall, revealing the mural’s decoration to include plant garlands, birds, and painted molding. Additional fragments show painted curved stucco meant to imitate the fluted columns of porticoed space.
