Archaeological site of San Vincenzino

Is it worth the trip?

If you are in Cecina or on this stretch of coast, yes, for an hour: the cistern is a chance to stand inside a complete Roman water tank, and the combined ticket with the museum in town, where the villa’s best finds are, makes a coherent half-day. It is not worth a long detour on its own. Above ground this is a plan of a villa, not standing rooms, and it opens only on certain days, so check the hours before you set out.

Getting there

The park is at Via Carlo Ginori 33, between Cecina and Marina di Cecina, near the mouth of the River Cecina (the operator; it.wikipedia). A car park is mapped about 105 m from the remains and a bus stop, “V. Ginori 29”, about 160 m away (OpenStreetMap).

It shares its opening hours with the town’s archaeological museum. From 1 May to 30 September it is open Tuesday to Thursday 16.00–19.00 and Friday to Sunday 10.00–13.00 and 16.00–19.00; from 1 October to 30 April, Wednesday and Thursday 14.00–17.00 and Friday to Sunday 10.00–13.00 and 14.00–17.00. A combined ticket for the park and the museum is €6.00, or €15.00 for a family of two adults and two paying children; the published tariff gives no price for the park alone. The museum ticket on its own is €4.50 (€3.00 for ages 6–18, over-65s and students in Tuscany), and under-6s, visitors with disabilities with one companion, and ICOM members go free (Comune di Cecina, read 24 October 2026 - check before travelling, since prices and hours change).

History

The villa stood on a low rise later called the Poggetto del Fico, on the left bank of the Cecina, a little over a kilometre from the coast, close to the Via Aurelia (it.wikipedia). It was probably begun around 30 BC and its original core was complete by AD 70. Between about AD 80 and 120 the rooms beside the atrium were remodelled, perhaps for the farm manager, with a store of more than twenty large buried jars for fermenting wine, and the owners’ quarters to the north were turned over to making olive oil and grinding grain (it.wikipedia; the operator). The wine went out in amphorae made locally, near the river mouth (it.wikipedia).

In the second and third centuries the owners added rooms for show: a summer dining room of 10 by 6.5 m with a basin and a nymphaeum, a round fountain of four basins faced with marble at the centre of the garden, and baths of about 940 m² with a palaestra, cold, warm and hot rooms and two pools. A great hall, perhaps for receptions, followed in the fourth century and, early in the fifth, an apsed hall that could be entered from outside, used for public ceremony. A hoard of late antique coins was found hidden under the floor of the hot room, and the alabaster torso of a statuette of Isis from a niche of the nymphaeum is in the museum at La Cinquantina (it.wikipedia).

Published figures for the size of the villa differ, between about 0.7 hectares (the operator) and 1.7 hectares (it.wikipedia). The villa is traditionally attributed to Albinus Caecina, of an old Etruscan family of Volterra: it may be the villa of Decius Albinus Caecina, prefect of Rome in 414, near which the poet Rutilius Namatianus describes salt pans in a lagoon (it.wikipedia). The Comune’s portal reports that Fulvia Donati of the University of Pisa confirmed the attribution in her publication on the villa; fr.wikipedia notes that no document attests it.

The villa was abandoned in the fifth century and stripped even of its marble floors. From the seventh century its southern part served as a cemetery, with burials into the tenth, and a modest settlement occupied the northern part in the fourteenth. The remains were still showing above ground in the 18th century; Leonetto Cipriani made a first excavation in the 19th, and systematic digs followed in the 1960s and 1970s and above all from 1983, by the Soprintendenza archeologica della Toscana with the University of Pisa (it.wikipedia). The park opened to the public in the mid-1990s: it.wikipedia gives 1995, fr.wikipedia 6 July 1996.