In spite of its internal geographical position, Piazza Armerina constitutes one of the most important archaeological centers of Sicily, thanks to the presence of one of the most beautiful Roman villas that today can be testified. This luxurious country side villa of the imperial family Maximien Hercules is situated in the fertile valley of the Gela stream. It was built between the end of the III century and the first years of the IV century AD., in the middle of a vast farming latifundium.
The "Villa Romana Del Casale" had its splendor period between the IV and the V century AD., according to the research of Vinicio Gentili, eminent professor to whom we owe the discovery of the archaeological site at the end of 1920. The latifundium was composed of a farming village and the ‘mansiones’, of the farms where the slaves and there ‘procurators’ practiced the exploitation of the fertile earth. The major interest to visit the rooms, the peristyles, the galleries and the thermal pieces of the vast villa, comes from the figurative and ornamental mosaics that decorate the pavements of each room without solution of continuity.