Piazza Armerina is a pretty and lively little hill town, boasting of more than one baroque church, a cathedral and a castle, and several other sites of note in the immediate environs. But it is quite impossible to convey that elusive quality, charm, in writing — or even in photography which so often deludes one with its faked images and selected angles. The little town had charm, though of course its monuments could not compare in importance to many another Sicilian town. Yes … I found myself thinking that it would be pleasant to spend a month there finishing a book. The walking seemed wonderful among these green and flourishing foothills. But the glimpse we had of it was regrettably brief; having signaled our presence to the hotel where we were to have lunch we set off at once to cover the six or so kilometers which separated us from the Imperial Villa — a kind of summer hideout built for some half-forgotten Roman Emperor. What is intriguing is that almost no ascription ever made about a Sicilian site or monument is ever more than tentative: you would have thought that this important version of Government House. Everywhere would offer one a little firm history. No. “It has been surmised that this hunting lodge could have belonged to the Emperor Maximianus Heraclius who shared his Emperorship with Diocletian.” The site they chose for the Imperial Villa is almost oppressively hidden away; it makes one conjecture why in such a landscape one should plank down a large and spacious building in the middle of a network of shallow ravines heavily wooded, and obviously awash in winter with mountain streams. Instead of planting it on a commanding hillock which (always a problem in hill architecture) drained well during the rains. There was something rather unhealthy and secretive in the choice of a site, and it must be infernally hot in August as a place to live in. It buzzed with insects and butterflies. We arrived in a cleared space where, together with a dozen or so other buses, we dropped anchor and traipsed off down the winding walks to the villa, marveling at the sultriness and the oppressive heat — so different from the Attic valleys we had traversed with all their brilliant cornfields.
We came at last to a clearing where an absolute monstrosity greeted our eyes — a straggling building in dirty white plastic which suggested the demesne of a mad market gardener who was specializing in asparagus. I could not believe my eyes. None of us could. We stood there mumchance and swallowing, wondering what the devil this construction was. Roberto, blushing and apologetic, told us.
So precious were the recently uncovered mosaics and so great the risk that they would be eaten into by the climate that someone had had the brilliant idea of covering them in this grotesque plastic housing through which a series of carefully arranged plank walks and duckboards allowed the curious to walk around the villa. It was a groan-making thing to do and only an archaeologist could have thought of it. Moreover, the mosaics, so interesting historically that one is glad to have made the effort to see them, are of a dullness extraordinary. But then the sort of people who build villas for Governors are for the most part interior decorators with a sense of grandiose banality, a sense of the expensively commonplace. Of such provenance is the Imperial Villa, though of course the number and clarity of the decorations merit interest despite their poor sense of plastic power. Historians must be interested in these elaborate hunting scenes, the warfare of Gods, and the faintly lecherous love scene which ends in a rather ordinary aesthetic experience. And all this in a white plastic housing which turned us all the color of wax. Was this the pleasure dome of an Emperor, or was it perhaps (an intelligent suggestion by Christopher Kininmonth) more the millionaire’s hideaway, constructed for the rich man who purveyed animals for the Roman arenas? The frescoes of animals are so numerous and their variety so great that it makes one pause and wonder. But as usual there is no proof of anything.
Dutifully we prowled the duckboards while Beddoes, who had culled a whole lot of Latin words from the Blue Guide, made up a sort of prose poem from fragments of it which he murmured aloud to himself in a vibrant tone of voice. Thus:
And so we enter the Atrium
By its purely polygonal court
To the left lies the Great Latrine
Ladies and Gents, the Great Latrine
For those who are taken short
But the marble seats are lost
Yet ahead of us is the Aediculum
Giving access to the Thermae
The vestibule can be viewed from
the Peristyle
Do not smile.
Next comes the frigidarium
With its apodyteria
Leading onwards with increasing hysteria
To the Alepterion
Between tepidarium and calidarium
Whence into a court where the Lesser
Latrine
Waits for those who have not yet been
In construction sumptuous
As befitted the Imperial Purple
But here the Muse punished him and he wobbled off a duckboard and all but plunged down upon one of the more precious tessellations, to the intense annoyance of Roberto and the collective disapproval of the Carousel. The dentist’s lady seemed particularly shocked and enraged and flounced about to register her disapproval. “That guy is sacrilegious,” she told her companion with a venomous look at Beddoes who seemed only a very little repentant. Frescoed bathers massaged by slaves, animal heads bountifully crowned with laurel — yes, but it was a pity that so extensive and such energetic cartoons had not come from more practiced or feeling hands. The commonplaceness of the whole thing hung about in the air; I was reminded suddenly of the interior decorations of the Castle of the Knights at Rhodes — which had been hatched by a Fascist Governor of the Dodecanese Islands who tried to echo the pretensions of Mussolini in this seat of government. The same empty banality — and here it was again — an echo from the last throes of the expiring Empire. “In richness and extent the villa can fairly be compared to Hadrian’s villa at Tivoli or Diocletian’s Palace at Split.” I don’t agree, but then who am I to say? The site alone militates against this opinion. These idle thoughts passed through my brain as we slowly negotiated the lesser latrine; “whose brick drain, marble hand basin, and pictorial decoration attest to the standards of imperial Roman comfort.” Yes, but if it were just the home of the local Onassis of the day all would be clear.
The visit was long, it was thorough, and it explained why when Martine listed the places she wished that I might visit in order to write the “pocket” Sicily for her children, she had quite omitted to mention it. Perhaps she had just forgotten — such is the vast prolixity of memorable monuments in this island that one could be forgiven for simply forgetting one which made no particular mark on one’s nervous system. I write these words, of course, subject to caution and with a certain diffidence, for the finds at the Imperial Villa, the most extensive in Europe, have become justly famous and it may well be that I am putting myself down as a hopeless Philistine. But I think not. And I am somewhat comforted by the fact that Deeds gave the place a very tentative marking in his little guide. But this he rather tended to explain away over the lunch table by saying that he was so deeply in love with the little red town of Aedoni which was a few kilometers off — and with the marvelous ancient Greek site of Morgantina — that all this heavy dun Roman stuff did not impress him. Indeed opinions were rather divided generally, and there were one or two of us who rather shared my view of the Villa. The dentist’s lady was most unsparing in her open dislike for Beddoes who glimmered about everywhere like a dragonfly peering over people’s shoulders and whispering things they didn’t want to hear. “That man,” she told her dentist at the lunch table, “is a pure desecrator.” It was as good a way of viewing Beddoes as any we had invented, and her accent had an envenomed Midwestern sting in it.