Skip to content
Menu
Hidden gem1st – 3rd c. ADRestricted access

Valdonega Roman Villa

Villa romana di Valdonega

villa · Veneto, Italy

What it is
The Valdonega villa is the ground floor of a luxurious Roman house of the 1st century AD on the hillside above Verona, outside the Roman town: three rooms with mosaic floors and painted walls, found in 1957 when a block of flats was being built and shown where they were found, under a modern roof (it.wikipedia; the operator).
What you’ll see
The house is small - about 17 by 11 m without its portico (the operator) - and what you see is its rooms at floor level, their walls standing low.
Worth the trip?
If you are in Verona on a Sunday or Tuesday afternoon and have booked, yes.
Getting there & cost
The villa is at Via Cesare Zoppi 5, in the Valdonega district (the operator), about 1.5 km north of Piazza delle Erbe and about 1 km from the Ponte Pietra and the Roman Theatre, measured in a straight line.Restricted access · Free · checked 23 October 2026Hours, tickets and parking
A long, low room under a flat modern ceiling, with large windows down the right-hand side. Low rubble walls and a row of short round column bases run along the edges of a pale mosaic floor edged with dark lines, and one column of pinkish stone with a carved capital stands to full height near the windows.
The main hall, the oecus, with the bases of its colonnade and one column standing, under the modern roof that shelters the villa. · Photo: Kia93VR · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A rectangular mosaic panel framed in dark tesserae on a white ground, filled with a winding vine stem with dark leaves and curling tendrils, and two small coloured birds standing among them.
One of the coloured mosaic panels between the columns of the main hall, with birds among scrolling leaves. · Photo: Syrio · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A narrow flight of stone steps with dark metal railings between a pink apartment building and a garden wall overgrown with creeper, a metal staircase rising on the right.
The flight of steps that is the way in to the villa. · Photo: Threecharlie · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

What is there today

The house is small - about 17 by 11 m without its portico (the operator) - and what you see is its rooms at floor level, their walls standing low. The largest is a hall with columns on three sides and a door between two big windows on the fourth, facing south. It is read as an oecus corinthius, a hall for banquets grander than an ordinary dining room, and the operator calls it the only one known so far in northern Italy (the operator; it.wikipedia). Its columns are of pink stone; one capital, carved with acanthus leaves and two dolphins drinking from a two-handled cup, is singled out for its quality and rarity (the operator), and is dated to the first half of the 1st century (it.wikipedia). The floor is black-and-white mosaic, with coloured panels between the columns in which birds sit among leaves and tendrils; traces of painted plaster remain on the walls, among them a small birdcage with a bird in it (the operator; it.wikipedia).

A small passage leads to a second room, whose only window looked out on the portico. Its walls are richly painted: in the lower band birds - a duck, an owl, a cockerel - separated by plants, and above them were griffins with horns of plenty, female masks and still lifes. Opposite the window, a high masonry base with a stone top is read as a counter for food (the operator; it.wikipedia). The bases of the columns of the L-shaped portico that ran along two sides of the house remain, and three steps at its north-east end suggest an upper floor, perhaps on terraces up the slope (the operator).

Is it worth the trip?

If you are in Verona on a Sunday or Tuesday afternoon and have booked, yes. The house is small and the visit short, but the painted birds and the mosaic panels are a close look at how a wealthy Roman family decorated its rooms, and entry is free. It is not a site to drop in on: there is no walk-in entry, and on other days it opens only for a guided visit arranged in advance. Anyone who cannot manage steps should ask the operator before going, since the way in is a flight of steps.

Getting there

The villa is at Via Cesare Zoppi 5, in the Valdonega district (the operator), about 1.5 km north of Piazza delle Erbe and about 1 km from the Ponte Pietra and the Roman Theatre, measured in a straight line. ATV bus lines 70, 73 and 95 stop on Via Marsala and Viale dei Colli, the nearest stop about 60 m away (OpenStreetMap). No car park is mapped at the villa; a free one lies about 450 m to the south-east (OpenStreetMap).

Entry is free, on Sundays and Tuesdays from 16.00, by booking only; the operator’s page gives the closing time as 18.00 in one place and 20.00 in another, so plan on the earlier one. A guided visit costs €8 a person. On other days the operator opens the villa for booked guided visits on request, by e-mail a few days ahead, and its three-hour guided tour of Roman Verona starts here on Sundays, at €20, €15 for ages 7–14 and free under 7 (Archeonaute, read 23 October 2026).

Visiting details

Opening hours
Sundays and Tuesdays from 16.00, by booking only; the operator's page gives the closing time as 18.00 in one place and 20.00 in another. On other days the operator opens it for booked guided visits on request, a few days ahead.
Tickets
Free. A guided visit is €8 a person. The operator's three-hour guided tour of Roman Verona, which starts at the villa on Sundays, is €20, €15 for ages 7–14, free under 7.
Parking
No car park is mapped at the villa; the nearest, a free surface car park (OpenStreetMap way/24892904), is about 450 m to the south-east.

Before you go

  • Entry is by booking only, by e-mail or telephone to the operator (details on its page), and only on Sunday and Tuesday afternoons unless a guided opening is arranged for another day.
  • The way in is a flight of steps, and no source says whether the villa can be reached without them.

Hours and prices checked 23 October 2026 on the operator's own site. Confirm before travelling.

History

The villa stood outside the town’s street grid, on the slope of the hill, and probably spread over several levels, perhaps as separate pavilions, with a view over the city (it.wikipedia). In its plan and its decoration it follows the most luxurious private houses of central and southern Italy (the operator). Only the ground floor of one part of it is known: the rest lies under modern buildings (it.wikipedia). A long, narrow space without openings along the west wall served to keep the damp of the hillside away from the rooms (the operator; it.wikipedia). The remains came to light in 1957 during the building of a block of flats and were excavated by the state archaeological service for the Veneto (archeoveneto; it.wikipedia).

More photographs

A small rectangular room seen from one end, its white mosaic floor framed by thin black lines, enclosed by low broken walls whose lower parts keep painted plaster in white, red and green with small plants and birds.
The second room, with its white mosaic floor and painted walls. · Photo: Kia93VR · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
A close view of painted wall plaster showing a duck in profile, with a greenish head and neck and red-brown wings, above a dark painted line; the plaster around it is cracked and partly lost.
A mallard painted on the wall of the second room. · Photo: Syrio · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The outside of a low modern building with a glass door and a row of large windows under a projecting roof, with carved stone slabs standing on brick bases along its wall and a strip of lawn in front.
The modern building that shelters the villa, with carved Roman stones set along its wall in the courtyard. · Photo: Marcok · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons

Nearby

  • A village of red-roofed houses and a slender bell tower with a pointed spire on the valley floor, seen from a hillside through olive branches, with flat farmland and a line of hills beyond.

    Photo: Adert · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Commons

    5 km · site · Veneto

    Ipogeo di Santa Maria in Stelle

    The water of an underground spring collects in a semicircular settling basin cut in the rock and runs on along a low, narrow, barrel-vaulted channel 100 m long, with four shafts along it.

  • A mosaic floor of interlaced grey, white and red bands forming circles and squares; the circles hold small pictures, among them a bird and a bearded head, and the squares hold red geometric stars.

    Photo: Piergiovanna Grossi · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    10 km · villa · Veneto

    Villa dei Mosaici

    The villa has been brought to light almost entirely (it.wikipedia).

  • Under a translucent roof on steel posts, a raised rectangular platform of rubble-stone walls with a gravelled top, a rusted metal plate set into its face, and exposed rock strata behind.

    Photo: Syrio · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Commons

    14 km · temple · Veneto

    Temple of Minerva (Marano di Valpolicella)

    What you see are the remains of the temple rebuilt in the Augustan age: the walls of its four-sided central chamber (the cella) and of the galleries that ran round it, under a modern shelter roof set against the rock face of the hill (the operator).

Straight-line distances.

Sources

Every fact on this page comes from the records below, each used under the licence noted.

SourceLicence
Pleiades 94419788CC BY
Wikidata Q55685791CC0
OpenStreetMap way/138976515ODbL
Wikipedia (it) — Villa romana di ValdonegaCC BY-SA 4.0
Wikipedia (en) — Valdonega Roman VillaCC BY-SA 4.0
Archeonaute — Villa Romana di Valdonega (description and visiting information)licence not recorded
Archeonaute — La Verona Sotterranea (guided tours)licence not recorded
Università di Padova, archeoveneto — Roman villa in Valdonegalicence not recorded