The Villa of Diomedes

Among the very first building excavated on the Pompei site, between 1771 and
1775, the Villa of Diomedes is also one of the most described and depicted by
the travelers of the Grand Tour. Since 2012, a multidisciplinary program has
been aimed at reconstructing its entire evolution, combining the material
fabrication of a Roman villa with its contemporary, imaginary one. It has
involved identifying and modeling the different construction and expansion
processes that punctuated its life in ancient times until the eruption of
Vesuvius in 79, as well as the restorations that have transformed the building
from the end of the 18th century to the present day. To achieve this,
different skills have been combined: history of excavations and restorations,
contruction archeology, databases, geographic information systems, geophysics,
structural engineering, scientific imagery and 3D modeling. The thirty three
contributions collected in this volume give an account of these complementary
views of the entire fabrication of this singular villa, examined from a long-
term perspective.