Parco archeologico di Centocelle

The vast urban park on the eastern outskirts of Rome, south of the Centocelle district, represents a cultural, environmental and landscape resource of extraordinary value. It is home to countless archaeological presences, testifying to the frequentation of the area since the earliest times, and includes three important villas from the Roman period: the so-called villa “ad duas lauros”, the “Villa della Piscina” and the “Villa delle Terme”.

In the late 19th century, after the unification of Italy, the new administration built in this area Fort Casilina, one of the forts of the Campo Trincerato for the defense of the city. A few years later, in 1909, on the occasion of the coming to Rome of Wilbur Wright, one of the legendary brothers who pioneered flight, the Club Aviatori di Roma rented the so-called Pratone di Centocelle to host aviation evolutions and demonstrations; it was here, in the early 1920s, that Italy’s first airport was built. Once the airport was decommissioned, the area was involved in major urban planning projects since the drafting of the 1962 Master Plan, which envisaged its construction as part of the Sistema Direzionale Orientale (SDO). Thanks to the archaeological constraint decided in 1992, the Municipal Administration allocated the entire area for the creation of a new urban park defined especially by the presence of the three Roman villas.

Of these, the most famous is the so-called “ad duas lauros” villa: the complex has several construction phases ranging from the Republican age to the late antique period, when the villa reached its maximum expansion, almost two hectares, with a garden decorated with sculptures such as the two-faced herm found during excavations. Also important was the so-called “Villa della Piscina” (Villa of the Pool), consisting precisely of a spectacular pool from the late 1st-early 2nd century AD. The third villa was named “Villa delle Terme” (Villa of the Baths) because of the thermal rooms it preservers, the only part of the original complex that was saved from destruction by modern quarries for pozzolan extraction. The structure is still well preserved even in the elevation, with floor remains including a mosaic depicting a robin.