ROMAN VILLA DEL TELLARO - VAL DI NOTO
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The Roman "Villa del Tellaro", near to Noto, is a rich extra-urban residence of the late Roman Imperial Age. The dating of the Villa is connected to the recovery of Roman Emperors coins dating to the IV century AD. The excavations were started from 1971 and the ruins of a Roman Villa, of around 6000 m2, were found. The Villa was the residence of a latifundist family, and its pavements were covered by remarkable mosaics that, for the refined style, are among the most significant of the period and can compete with those, very well-known, of Piazza Armerina. The central body of the Villa, more little than the Villa in Patti, articulates around a wide peristyle. The way of the portico on the northern side had a mosaic flooring with laurel festoons and floral motifs. In the peristyle other rooms, that keeps illustrated mosaics, appear. In the first of these rooms, the mosaic, very damaged, keeps a panel with the scene of the ransom of Hector's body: Odysseus, Achilles and Diomedes, identified by Greek inscriptions, are engaged in the weighing of the hero's body. The figure of Priam is lost; the fragmentary Hector's body was on a dish of the balance; the gold for the ransom was in the other dish. The dramatic representation is framed by a decorative stripe rich of plants and animals: among these a wonderful tiger while takes a jump. The details of the feline are the result of a sapient dosage of colours comparable to a fresco more than a mosaic. The floor of the second room shows an hunting scene, with a banquet in the open air among the trees and a female figure performed as personification of Africa. The scenes of the second room recall the hunting mosaics in the Roman "Villa del Casale" in Piazza Armerina, but with more stylized adn two-dimensional figures, with uncertain proportions, that make very different the effect. Probably the mosaics are the opera of African workers. The third room has a figurative mosaic more complex: in the four corners, as many pots turned to the centre, from which overflow flowers and fruit and from which start laurel festoons that meet in the centre in a completely lost tile, delimiting four semicircular areas containing other scenes as an erotic dance of a Satyr and a Maenad.
The Roman residence burnt in a fire, probably in the end of the IV century. Perhaps it was a consequence of the Barbarian coming. Over the layer of rubble and ash abandoned for centuries, in 1700 a farm was built, shearing the survived mosaics and burying them under 50 centimetres of land and stones. For the experts they are the most beautiful and artistic mosaic floors in Italy.
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