The Villa of Roman Mosaics 1-14-16

We had to change our plans as I've mentioned, so we decided we'd rather see the Greek temple at Agrigento than spend the day trekking on Mt. Etna.  It was our original plan to see it the second day but that fell apart with the car.  So we backtracked, but on the way we decided we would stop at the Villa del Casale in Piazza Armerina.  This led us up into the hills west of Syracuse and over the interior on beautiful mountain roads.  Along the way we had wonderful views of  Mount Etna in some recompense for our not being able to spend the day there. Also as we drove along we noted

 

cactus plants everywhere and at one point even saw where they were being cultivated. They are very large and it appears that the farmers may used them as fences in certain instances. After a couple hour drive we arrived at the site. The villa contains what by some accounts is the finest group of Roman floor mosaics in the world.  I would believe it, there are more that 30 rooms with almost completely intact floors. They were buried by a 12th century mudslide and only rediscovered in the late 19th century.  Fully uncovering them took place in the 50's and 60's and is an ongoing project.
The full extent of the villa is immense, just one room, the corridor of hunting scenes is over 300 feet long by 20 feet wide and it is a small part of the complete villa.  Each room has a a unique design and all of them are complex and multi-colored.  It was built around a courtyard that looks to be at least 100 feet on each side and has rooms off of all sides.  It also contains a pond in the center which would have had running water to provide a serene atmosphere for the inhabitants.

One particularly famous room is called the "Hall of the Female Gymnasts in Bikinis" and it contains 9 women each of whom must be 8 feet in length. They are dressed in very brief athletic costumes that look very much like bikinis.
There are so many rooms that trying to talk about each one is impossible but there are rooms that also portray scenes from the sea,  and additional hunting and mythical depictions.
One particular room had a scene from Homer's Odyssey where Jason and his crew were trapped in the den of the Cyclopes, but in the Roman version he had 3 eyes.  We had no idea that it would be so extensive and we ended up spending over 2 hours just walking through, reading the descriptions (luckily in in English as well as Italian), and being dazzled.
After our visit we had another 2 hours drive to get us over to Agrigento, where tomorrow we hope to spend the morning visiting the "valley of temples".  Another world heritage site, containing several Greek temple ruins and at least one still standing.