The Coiedii Domus

Whenever friends come to visit us, we love to take them to the Coiedii Domus, on the right bank of the Cesano river, in the province of Ancona. It is one of the best preserved and most beautiful private houses from the Roman time in central Italy and lies within an archeological park in the Suasa Valley which hosts the foro (square), the theatre, the amphitheatre and the necropolis. The house, extending over 3.000 square meters, dates back to the late Republican age but underwent modifications through six centuries. The mosaics, covering a time span of four hundred years (from the 1^st century b.C. to the 3^rd a.C.), always strike me with their beauty: both the ones with geometrical patterns and those displaying figures. Some mosaics are monochromatic but the one I am fond of is the polychromatic one in the banquet room (the oecus tricliniare). It has a rectangular shape and is made of sixteen different kinds of carved and inlaid stones, among which porphyry, red marble and cipolin.

There is a nice web-site on the archeological park called Progetto Suasa, where you can visit the area by web-cam. If you click on International, select English and go to the Archeological Park page, however, please don’t get upset by the lines reciting “the tour begins in the museum of the domus of Coiedii where there is the ticket to the toilet”. The text goes on saying that on your visit you will be accompanied by qualified personnel (where? to the toilet?). So, please don’t worry. You won’t be forced to start your tour by visiting the restrooms (unless, of course, you want to), neither will  qualified personnel accompany you in case you need to use one.

Is that an innovative idea to unsettle the traditional view we have on guided tours? Do they really intend épater le burgeois? Might be. Even if I think that it’s more probable that the google-translator has simply messed up something.