The Villa of Diomedes

Among the very first building excavated on the Pompei site, between 1771 and 1775, the Villa of Diomedes is also one of the most described and depicted by the travelers of the Grand Tour. Since 2012, a multidisciplinary program has been aimed at reconstructing its entire evolution, combining the material fabrication of a Roman villa with its contemporary, imaginary one. It has involved identifying and modeling the different construction and expansion processes that punctuated its life in ancient times until the eruption of Vesuvius in 79, as well as the restorations that have transformed the building from the end of the 18th century to the present day. To achieve this, different skills have been combined: history of excavations and restorations, contruction archeology, databases, geographic information systems, geophysics, structural engineering, scientific imagery and 3D modeling. The thirty three contributions collected in this volume give an account of these complementary views of the entire fabrication of this singular villa, examined from a long-term perspective.