Villa dei Quintili, Roma, 5 x 8 in., oil

The Villa of the Quintilii (Italian: Villa dei Quintili)  is an ancient Roman villa along the Via Appia Antica just outside the traditional boundaries of Rome. It was built by the rich and cultured brothers Quintilius  in the course of the 2nd century.

The ruins   are of such extent that when they were first excavated, the site was called Roma Vecchia (“Old Rome”) by the locals, as they occupied too great a ground, it seemed, to have been anything less than a town. There is a small museum on site.

There was a bit of drama that day for me as they did not allow photos using a tripod. I mount my painting box on a tripod, so when I was setting up, one of the guards got very upset and was literally screaming at me to give her the tripod as I could not explain that I was painting, and not using it to photograph. She took it, but a little later, one my  Italian painting companions  rescued it from the guardhouse!