Villa Regina opens the doors of its construction site on Friday 14 June, on the occasion of the Archaeology Days, to tell the story of the safety and restoration work that is taking place there, while also offering the opportunity to visit the rustic Villa, pending its final reopening. Visits to the construction site will take place from 9:00 to 12:00 and from 13:00 to 16:30, with free admission for visitors, who will be welcomed by a manager of the ACF Restauri Company and an official of the Archaeological Park. The Archaeology Days, scheduled from 14 to 16 June 2019 in state and non-state cultural sites, promoted by the Mibac, were born on the initiative of the French National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP – lnstitut national de recherches archéologiques préventives), which for the tenth anniversary has involved all European countries, as an opportunity to promote the heritage and make known the work of the archaeologist, through conferences, shows, educational workshops and guided visits to excavation sites.
Villa Regina is the only completely excavated rustic villa of the numerous farms specialized in agricultural production present in the Pompeii area. It was discovered in 1977, following construction work, and then brought to light with careful excavation campaigns concluded in 1980. It is composed of various rooms arranged on the three sides of an uncovered courtyard that houses the wine cellar with eighteen dolia (jars for storing wine). The main activity was in fact the production of wine. In the villa there are some casts of the wooden frames of doors and windows. The valuable rooms of the Villa, in addition to the large portico, the torcularium with the casts of the wooden press and the holes and wells for anchoring it to the ground, the pressing basin and the container for collecting the must; include the triclinium, with walls decorated with paintings attributed to the transition phase between the third and fourth styles; the kitchen, out of use at the time of the eruption, with a brick oven and hearth in the centre of the room, a service room with a water cistern, surmounted by a clay vase; the granary for storing hay, cereals and legumes, adjacent to the open farmyard. The villa, which also had an upper floor, can be dated in its original layout to the first century. BC and was expanded in at least two successive phases in the Augustan and Julio-Claudian periods. A transport cart (plaustrum) was found during the excavation in the portico, of which the grooves left by the wheels in the ground remain evident in a small street adjacent to the villa. The floor level of the area surrounding the villa consists of agricultural land from 79 AD, which preserves traces of ancient cultivations and of which casts of the vine roots have been made. Next to them, vines have been replanted for the demonstrative reconstruction of the vineyard layout.
Along the walls of the excavation the stratigraphy of the ground clearly shows the succession of deposits of pyroclastic material determined by the eruption of 79 AD which caused the destruction of the small farm. The interventions aimed at making the building safe and for future use by the public, have included the arrangement and restoration of the roofs, in addition to conservative interventions of cleaning of the decorative apparatus.
Entrance to the adjacent Boscoreale Antiquarium remains subject to a fee.
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