Brief history of the archaeological site

Villa Romana del Tellaro 

In 1971, the discovery of clandestine excavations in the district Caddeddi in the town of Noto, allowed to identify, in the lower valley of the river Tellaro (the ancient Eloros), a Roman villa late imperial that extended below a nineteenth-century farmhouse in an almost total state of abandonment. Wanting to avoid unnecessary destruction such as to erase the surviving evidence of the history of the site, the work of exploration lasted for more than twenty years under the direction of Giuseppe Voza. The archaeological excavations have determined that the farmhouse was built overlapping, cutting or totally erasing the structures of the Roman villa so that few, though precious, traces were preserved below the bodies of the west, south and south-east of farmhouse.

The Roman villa, for the part so far excavated, covers an area of about 3000 square meters and develops around a rectangular peristyle of 20×24 meters, surrounded by a portico with aisles of different widths. The excavation data and the heights of the wall structures lead to believe that the first three rows of rooms are related to a lower level, used for services or storage, while the upper level, that of the portico, was the fourth row of rooms that opened onto it, equipped with mosaic floors of extraordinary beauty. The coverings of the environments with mosaics have been carried out without repeating the original shapes and sizes of the ancient environments, using structures in metal and glass, with the intent to allow the use of the findings in optimal conditions ensuring their preservation.