Villa dei Quattro Venti
A city within the city
Villa dei Quattro Venti was built using structural solutions which made it extremely solid and spectacular, almost creating a new city beside the existing one.
First of all it was necessary to create a flat terrace, to solve the problem posed by the uneven mountain ground. This was done by means of a rectangular substructure, a sort of “container” which evened out the ground’s height difference.
On this substructure, a terrace was built on which the master’s villa was raised. A cryptoporticus surrounded the terrace, to mask the joint between the upper and the lower structure and make it more harmonious, while at the same time concealing that the volume of the second terrace was used as a reservoir.
A garden probably occupied the substructure’s northern portion, one side of which stands out as irregular against the rest. Two structures are still visible in this area: one of them has a round plan, the other has a mixtilinear plan. Instead, there is hardly something to see of the main villa’s structures, which are either interred or covered with vegetation.
Research: Research is at an advanced planning stage.
Villa dei Quattro Venti
(photo by Archivio Parco Nazionale del Circeo)
