DRAFT

Thès estate, villa of the Peacock

Contributor: Yichen Liu
Published: 2021-04-21
Modified: 2025-06-29

Province

Province Description

Ancient Roman colony (founded 118 BCE) and senatorial province located in modern southern France, along the Mediterranean. This province had stronger cultural and political ties to Italy than the rest of Gaul.

Location

Sublocation

Thès estate, villa of the Peacock

Villa

Thès estate, villa of the Peacock

Keywords

Villa Description

TThis building, thought to be a suburban villa, is in fact only very partially known. It is situated just at the edge of the town, below the "shopping quarter". Discovered on property of the Thès family in 1964, it was excavated and studied from 1966 to 1989. The dwelling was built, according to Yves de Kisch, between approximately A.D. 70 and 100. In the Severin period, according to H. Lavagne, it received a rich decoration of homogeneous mosaics. Abandoned at the end of the third century, it shows traces of reoccupation in late antiquity. Only the northern part of the house is known; the wings to the east and west and the southern part were destroyed in the course of earth moving for a modern subdivision. The northern wing is constructed symmetrically relative to the axis of the principal reception room [4], where the peacock mosaic was found which gives the house its name. On the south, this room opened directly, without a portico, onto the courtyard, (25.5 m in the east-west direction) which was undoubtedly treated as a garden. The southern limit is unknown, but a hypothetical reconstruction has made it a rectangle with an area of some 1000 square meters, which seems on the high side. An ornamental fountain, now in ruins, stood in a pool in front of the reception room [4]. Of the fountain there remains only a block of concrete surrounded on three sides by a trench 18 centimeters deep. The pool had a marble revetment, and around it were three flagstones of white molasse (a soft sandstone.) The whole structure occupied a space 4 meters by 1.5 meters. The fountain was fed by a lead pipe, of which a fragment was found.

The façade of the back of the building opened to north by a portico [4], 3.45 meters wide. Beyond it lay an elongated courtyard (38.15 by 5.50 m) paved with concrete. An ornamental fountain with a water ladder was installed in a niche in the middle of the retaining wall in line with the center of the reception room. The top of the semi-dome of the niche has been found. Water supplied through a lead pipe gurgled over white marble steps framed between pilasters, spilled into a polygonal pool about 2.5 meters long, then rushed along a steeply sloped gutter under the reception room and into the courtyard on the south.

Plans

Plan of Villa of The Peacock

Images

Axon of Villa of The Peacock

Dates

A.D. 70-100

Bibliography

  1. KISCH, Yves . La Villa Du Paon: Le Quartier Des Boutiques : Vaison-La-Romaine. Vaison-la-Romaine: Mairie, 1990 (worldcat)

  2. H. Lavagne, Recueil génral des mosaïques de la Gaule romaine, III, province de Narbonnaise 3, partie sud-est, Xe suppl. à Gallia, Paris CNRS, 2000, n° 647-53, p. 157 ss.

  3. Provost, Michel, Joe͏̈l-Claude Meffre, and Dominique Carru. Vaison-la-romaine Et Ses Campagnes. Paris: Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, 2003, P.277-287. (worldcat)

Places

Explore the places containing this garden: