Una domus tardoantica e la sua decorazione pavimentale e parietale nell'area della Villa Casali sul Celio a Roma in alcuni disegni ottocenteschi di Enrico Calderar

A late antique domus and its floor and wall decoration in the area of the villa Casali on the Celio in Rome in some Nineteenth-century drawings by Enrico Calderari. An 1824 written report spoke of an excavation that was being carried out in Rome, on the Caelian Hill, that year, in the area known as Villa Casali, where the Military Hospital now stands. That document also mentioned a number of drawings of the buildings and mosaics that had been unearthed by those excavations. Originally, such drawings must have been attached to the report but were not with it, so they had been thought to be lost, but then they have been recently found in the State Archives in Rome. All of the report and drawings are published in this paper, along with the remains of the building found there, and the marble and mosaic floors and facings that decorated it are described and set in the right topographic, archaeological and stylistic contexts. The results of this survey show that the excavations unearthed part of a grand late antique domus, which must have certainly belonged to one of Rome’s most important aristocratic families of the time.