Cagliari, Villa di Tigellio

The archaeological area is located at the foot of the Buon Cammino Hill, not far from the Roman amphitheater. The name 'villa di Tigellio' has now entered, improperly, into the usual use to indicate an archaeological area of the city. In reality, the area includes not a single building but an entire residential district from the Roman era.
The name originates from the erroneous belief that the “villa” of Tigellio Ermogene was located on this site, a Sardinian musician who lived in Rome in the final years of the republic and who was a friend and acquaintance of powerful characters, such as Caesar and Octavian, Cicero and Horace.
The remains of the building complex visible today date back at least to the end of the first century BC - beginning of the first century AD, but the life of the residential area lasted a long time, reaching up to the III-IV century AD (if not even, according to some, until the 6th-7th century AD).
The structures are relevant to a thermal building and three residential buildings, typologically defined as “with a tetrastile atrium”, that is, characterized by the presence of an atrium with four columns placed at the four corners of a central tank called an “impluvium” for collecting rainwater.
Of the three buildings subjected to an excavation investigation, two have emerged with greater evidence: the “house of the painted board”, which returned remains of mosaic pavement, and the “house of stuccos”, which owes its name to the presence of a significant amount of fragments of stucco decoration.
The visible wall structures are of the “frame” type, that is, characterized by the use of large vertical pillars, arranged at a certain distance from each other, while the intermediate wall sections are filled with medium-small pebbles. This is a technique already widely used in the Punic environment, but whose use continued even in Roman and early medieval times.

History of excavations
The publication in 1865 by Pietro Martini of a “Life of Tigellio” of which a certain Sertorio was the author (a work that later turned out to be a fake) led Canon Giovanni Spano to undertake an excavation campaign in the area that has since taken the name of “Villa di Tigellio”. If we exclude some subsequent short-term interventions, the second important excavation campaign was conducted at the site by Gennaro Pesce in 1963-64. The most recent investigations were conducted in 1982 and 1983 by the Institute of Antiquities, Archaeology and Art of the University of Cagliari in collaboration with the Archaeological Superintendence for the Provinces of Cagliari and Oristano.

Bibliography
“Cagliari. “Villa di Tigellio”. The materials of the old excavations”, in Annals of the Faculty of Letters and Philosophy of the University of Cagliari, n.s., III, XL, 1980-81;
The “Villa di Tigellio”. Excavation exhibition (Cagliari, Cittadella dei Musei, 24 October-14 November 1981), Cagliari, Institute of Antiquities, Archaeology and Art of the University of Cagliari, 1981; “Cagliari. “Villa di Tigellio”. 1980 excavation campaign”, in Studi Sardi, XXVI, 1981-85;
P. Meloni, Roman Sardinia, Sassari, Chiarella, 1990;
S. Angiolillo, The Art of Roman Sardinia, Milan, Jaca Book, 1998; A.M. Colavitti-C.
Tronchetti, Archaeological Guide to Cagliari, series “Archaeological Sardinia. Guides and Itineraries”, Sassari, Carlo Delfino, 2003;
A.M. Colavitti, Cagliari, Rome, L'Erma di Bretschneider, 2003;
A. Mastino, History of Ancient Sardinia, Nuoro, Il Mistrale, 2005.

Tag

Structure category: archaeological area or park

Content type: Archaeological complex
Archaeology

Usability: Closed

Province: Cagliari

Common: Cagliari

Macro Territorial Area: South Sardinia

POSTAL CODE: 09123

Address: via Carbonazzi, 7

Telephone: +39 366 2562826

E-mail: info@beniculturalicagliari.it

Website: www.beniculturalicagliari.it/it/beni/9/villa-di-tigellio

September 22nd - March 21

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM

March 22nd - September 21

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday - Friday - Saturday - Sunday

3:00 PM - 6:00 PM

Information on tickets and access: The site is currently closed to the public. The data shown on tickets and timetables were in force before the closing of the structure. It is currently not possible to indicate a probable date for the museum to reopen.

Access mode: For a fee

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