Ancient villa Armira

Overview

Villa "Armira" is an ancient Roman villa near Ivaylovgrad.

Today it is a cultural monument of national importance. Since 2014 it is under number 72b in the list "100 national tourist sites" of the Bulgarian Tourist Union.

The villa was opened in 1964 during the construction of a dam 1.5 km southwest of Ladja. Subsequent archeological excavations have uncovered the remains of a suburban villa from the period of the Roman Empire in our lands. Today it is known as Villa Armira, derived from the name of the small river Armira, a tributary of the river Arda, on the banks of which the villa was built.

The ancient Villa Armira is an impressive complex of residential and farm buildings, located on an area of ​​2200 m2. Its residential part, occupying an area of ​​978 m2, comprises a large courtyard, surrounded by a covered gallery with a peristyle (colonnade) and an impluvium (pool) in the middle. Around it are located the living rooms - dining room, living room, kitchen, bedroom, bathroom and others. Heating is provided by hypocaust (underfloor heating, in which the floor of the building is raised on columns of masonry bricks or ceramic pipes, between which passes hot air from specially built fireplaces).

During the excavations, well-preserved mosaics with figural and geometric motifs, capitals, openwork railings, hermes, profiled fragments of columns, pilasters, cornices and marble cladding were found. Numerous ceramic vessels, jewelry and household items were also found. The villa is a magnificent mansion, whose rooms, in addition to mosaics on the floors, are decorated with rich marble decoration and colored plaster. In this respect, it undoubtedly emerges as the most magnificent of all known similar buildings in Roman Thrace. Buildings with such a rich marble cladding are rare in the provinces of the Roman Empire (1st - 5th century). Of particular importance is the fact that the degree of preservation of decorative elements allows virtually complete restoration of the interior of the building.

Due to the displacement of the terrain, the economic complex to the villa has been preserved in a significantly worse condition. Its purpose was to provide the activity of land exploitation, storage and processing of agricultural products, inventory and others. There are no specific data on the nature of the developed agricultural activity.

The villa was inhabited until the third quarter of the 4th century. Its destruction is associated with the great devastation of the vicinity of Adrianople in 378, when the Roman army, under the command of Valens, was defeated at Adrianople by the Goths, and the emperor himself was wounded and taken by his soldiers to a villa near the battlefield. The Goths later discovered this refuge of the wounded emperor, captured and burned the villa and killed the emperor himself. It is very likely that these events took place here.