Rome Fellowships: Villa pulcherrima imminet litori: maritime villas, ports and Africa Proconsularis in Trajan's Mediterranean politics

Imperial villas, far from being just luxurious leisurely retreats or mere locales for conspicuous consumption, played a crucial role in the daily life of the Roman imperial court, as emerges from a wealth of archaeological, epigraphic and literary evidence. My doctoral research (Oxford, 2022) examined the use of imperial villas as centres for the government of the empire, and investigated the extent to which the activities that emperors performed in fulfilment of their role impacted on the design of the spaces allocated to them (reception halls, entertainment buildings, bathing facilities and dining halls).