Gardens of Lucullus found under the Hertziana

Mosaics from the fabled Gardens of Lucullus, one of the pioneering influences on gardening, have been brought to light after 2,000 years by archaeologists in Rome.

The vast terraced gardens, or Horti, covered what is now the built-up area above the Spanish Steps. The first known attempt in the West to “tame nature” through landscaping, the gardens were laid out around a patrician villa in the middle of the 1st century BC by Lucius Licinius Lucullus, one of Ancient Rome’s most celebrated generals, after he retired in disillusion from war and politics.

They became a benchmark for all Roman pleasure gardens, and were taken over and developed by Roman emperors. The 1st-century mosaics decorated the nymphaeum, an artificial grotto with water features. One depicts a corpulent cupid riding a dolphin and another a wolf’s head in green and gold.

Appropriately enough, they were found below the Hertziana, a central destination for any art historian working in Rome.

Excavations below the library have also brought to light a marble head of Venus, perhaps a relic of the statues that once adorned the nymphaeum. Maria Antonietta Tomei, of the Rome Superintendency for Archaeology, said when workers began demolishing the interior of the building to modernise it “the architecture of the Ancient Roman garden appeared before our eyes. It seems like a dream.”

From the Times of London.

Posted by David on May 17, 2007 10:00 AM