The great peristyle of the villa has been reconstructed from the point of view of someone looking at the north portico from the south-east corner of the garden.

With the background of the sea sound and the birds that lived in the gardens, you can observe the great colonnade, which was as big as a football pitch, measuring over than 120×45 m.

The rich vegetation was expertly divided into flower beds and walkways, dominated by scented Mediterranean plants that allow you to taste on the fragrances commonly used in the Roman world. The installation is conceived as an immersive experience where, through technology and a specially developed software, not only the eyes but also the other senses are involved.

A machine of perfumes (iSense) will make you smell various typical essences of the Vesuvian area, giving the visitors a multisensory experience which also represents a symbolic time warp. At the same time, this installation will show you the style of “living in a villa”. A lifestyle in which natural beauties and those created by man, such as architecture and décor, met with the concept of otium, conceived as the distance from the political and economic affairs to devote yourself to studies.

Villa of Papyri, in fact, was the seat of a philosophical Epicurean school and the great persityle was the perfect place for lectures and rhetorical disputes that accompanied the educational path of young Romans.

At the centre of the garden a large pool stands out.  On its edges there were some extraordinary statues such as the pair of fawns, the sleeping satyr, the drunken satyr and the runners, which are among the most famous bronzes found in the villa and that you can admire on the screens you have just seen.