Villa romana dell'Auditorium e Museo Archeologico

The Sovrintendenza Capitolina puts the excavated area at about 2,500 square metres; the structures emerged four metres down and survive at foundation level. It records continuous occupation from the second half of the 6th century BC to the 2nd century AD, when the site was abandoned, probably because of the Tiber's floods. A modest farm of the 6th century BC was enlarged in the 5th into a rich rural villa round a central court, with a well-preserved olive press whose pressing surface is cut from a squared block of cappellaccio; a roofed court followed in the late 4th or early 3rd century, together with an eaves tile decorated with the bearded head of a river god identifiable as Achelous; an atrium with impluvium, bedrooms and tablinum was built between the mid-3rd and the 2nd century; and the villa was enlarged again in the Augustan age behind a heavy reticulate wall.