The Roman Villa of Torre de Palma

The site of the Roman Villa of Torre de Palma was first occupied during the Iron Age, between the late 7th century B.C. and the early 5th century B.C., when an incineration necropolis was installed here, and possibly some domestic structures.

A sizeable agricultural estate appeared in the Roman era. Its ruins now extend over 13,000 square meters and are divided by a small watercourse. It was an imposing villa with several construction and occupation phases, chronologically framed between the 1st and the 7th century A.D. This villa’s residential area (pars urbana) is organised around a peristylium (inner courtyard) with a rectangular plan, with accesses to several rooms, many of which are paved with high-quality mosaics. The triclinium (banquet hall) was decorated with a mosaic featuring a mythological scene (Mosaic of the Muse). The living room, or reception room, had a triple apse and a mosaic showing five horses, which may be related to horse breeding by the estate owners and/or their importance in sports. Both the Mosaic of the Muses and the Mosaic of the Horses are currently displayed in the National Archaeology Museum in Lisbon. The bath complex is located at the East and West ends of the villa and preserves traces of several compartments and piping systems. This villa’s pars rustica, the area dedicated to agricultural and animal breeding, is quite large, with many identified functional areas (olive oil and wine presses, forges), storage facilities, and rooms for servants and enslaved people.

In the late 4th/early 5th century A.D., a Paleo-Christian Basilica was built to the North of the Villa of Torre de Palma over one of the necropolises of the High Roman Empire. It had a rectangular plant, three aisles, a monumental Baptistery with a two-cross plan paved in marble, and an adjoining building (monastery or ecclesiastic school). Funerary areas appeared around this space of religious worship, stating the profound religious and ritual transformations that occurred during the Late Antiquity/High Middle Ages.