The Villa Regina di Boscoreale (Naples, Italy) was a simple farmhouse of the 1st century A.D. where the land was cultivated to produce wine and other foods. Destroyed by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, it is located six meters below the current level of the countryside.
It was not different from our farms. It had a central courtyard with a columned portico onto which the rooms for the production of wine opened. In two of them the torcularium that is the press for pressing the grapes, was placed, where a herm of Dionysus, the god linked to wine, was found. I confirms that wine was produced there.
Opposite there was the storage room for wine, with eighteen large jars inserted in the pavemente (the dolia), in which the wine was stored. Some of them still have the lid and the trademark.
Outside the wine cell was the calcatorium, a threshing floor where the grapes were pressed with feet before passing them to the wine press.
During recent excavations casts of the roots of trees and plants were made. Some vines have been planted in the surrounding area to reconstruct the ancient agricultural landscape.
The farmhouse was modest, but it had a small triclinium, decorated with frescoes, a kitchen, a lararium. The eruption of Vesuvius destroyed it while repair work was underway after the earthquake of 63 AD.
In the Antiquarium, the small museum annexed to the excavations, the agricultural tools are preserved, which are the same ones that we use today: sickles, billhooks, vases and shovels. There also is a carbonized bread and the cast of a poor dog killed by the eruption.