Villa Armira

Villa Armira features many examples of the Roman tradition in designing and organizing villas.

Villa Armira is composed of two floors, and it contains the typical rooms that other Roman villas would have. The two-storey U-shaped villa spreads over 3,600 square metres (39,000 sq ft) amidst a garden, with an impluvium in the middle. Villa Armira had 22 separate rooms on the ground floor alone in addition to a panoramic terrace. It was expanded eastward in the 3rd century AD with a triclinium and a hypocaust.^[2]A part of the villa also includes an underfloor heating system, built for heating the inside of the building's rooms.

The walls of the entire ground floor were covered in elaborately decorated white marble. The villa's complex floor mosaics display geometric designs and depictions of animals and plants. It is thought that masters of sculptures from the city Aphrodisias, a city that was known for its school of sculpture and skillful craftsmen, were sent to work there.^[3] The mosaics in the master's chamber depict the 2nd century AD owner with his two children: these are the only Roman-era mosaic portraits to be discovered in Bulgaria. A common theme in the villa's decoration is the gorgon Medusa.^[2]

Today the 2nd-century mosaic portraits of the owner and his children can be seen in the National Historical Museum in Sofia, the ceramic finds are exhibited in the National Archaeological Museum, while copies of the marble decoration are part of the Kardzhali Regional Historical Museum's fund.^[2]

The villa itself, with many of the floor mosaics intact, underwent Phare-funded reconstruction and anastylosis and was opened for visitors in 2008.^[4][5]

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  Interior view
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  Interior view
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  Mosaic depiction of the gorgon Medusa
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  Geometric floor mosaics

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41°29′56.65″N 26°6′22.55″E / 41.4990694°N 26.1062639°E / 41.4990694; 26.1062639