A view into the past
The Russi Roman Villa is located in the Po Valley, near the city of Ravenna.
Today the Villa is in the middle of an ecological rebalancing area at a level that is 11 meters lower than the level of the present town of Russi. Such a difference in height is the result of the accumulation of soil layers throughout the centuries. In the last century the site was used as a clay quarry thus turning it into a basin.
The main purpose of this project is to preserve the ancient mosaics and, at the same time, to blend the archaeological site with its natural context as well as to improve the visitor’s experiencing of the remains.
The visitor center has a fragmented layout aimed at both reactivating the park and integrating into the observatories for fauna and flora scattered throughout the rebalancing area.
The focal point of the visiting path coincides with the building which leads to the park: a concrete blade that allows the sight to break through the trees, a horizontal plane from which the antique can be admired in its entirety.
From its rooftop a sixty-step stairway leads the visitor into “the past” amplifying the topographical and temporal distance between the archaeological remains and the present city.
Along the stairs are some recesses that host archaeological findings.
This building serves, therefore, manifold purposes: it is a threshold, a viewpoint, a museum and a “time machine”.
The visitor center is made of concrete cast in formworks consisting of wooden listels. The listels have also been used to clad the facade of the buildings sheltering the remains. Two different treatments that reveal two different attitudes: on the one hand a gentle contact with the antique, on the other a strong connection with the ground.
The last stop of the visiting path coincides with the very archaeological site. This project - developed within the framework of the bonds imposed by conservation needs related to the protection of the mosaics - is aimed at offering important insights into the Roman remains through a simplified reconstruction of some parts of the ancient Villa.
Three volumes sit gently on the existing walls and each of them coincides with three distinct areas of the Villa: the dominus apartment, the procurator apartment and the torcularium.
A further division within the dominus apartment helps the visitor understand the original functions of this environment consisting of: the tablinum, the triclinium, the cubicula and the peristilium.
Iron protrusions highlight the openings in the two major volumes - the apartments - each of these corresponding to each ancient door. The iron protrusions also serve the purpose of protecting the mosaics from atmospheric agents.
The indirect sunlight enters the rooms gently illuminating the mosaics.
The volume that shelters the torcularium, a major element of the pars fructuaria, is different from those ones that shelter the residential area. That is, indeed, about half the height of the latter ones and furthermore it is not possible to enter it, although some openings allow visitors to have a look at the inside from different angles.
The analysis of the existing structures represented a key factor in choosing the constructive system of the project. Most of the walls have been rebuilt between the Sixties and the Eighties, whereas the foundations are datable to the Roman era.
All that considered, it has been decided to use XLAM panels to be connected to the existing walls by means of anchor bolts that shall not reach the foundations.
This system, in addition to showing a good level of reversibility, works by load-bearing walls which spread their weight evenly over the existing masonry structure (which worked in the same way).
As for the treatment of the horizontal surfaces, the different colorings of stabilized sand help distinguish ancient indoor environments from porches and later additions and then, on the rooftop some concrete blocks reproduce the plan of the Villa to guarantee the understanding of the planimetric layout of the reamains from the viewpoint.