Casa Romana

In 1933 a strong earthquake flattened much of Kos Town, and the rebuilding that followed brought one of the island's best archaeological finds into the open. While the Italian administration of the Dodecanese cleared rubble, the archaeologist Luciano Laurenzi uncovered the remains of a large Roman house beneath the modern streets. Excavation continued until about 1940, and the villa was then restored enough to be walked through, which is what visitors see today as Casa Romana.

The house is what archaeologists call a peristyle villa: rooms arranged around open courtyards with columns, so that light and air reached the interior. The surviving building dates to the third century AD, raised on older Hellenistic foundations, and it has some three dozen rooms and three atria. It was the home of a wealthy family of the Koan elite, and the scale of the reception rooms, the marble wall linings and the mosaic floors show what prosperity looked like in a provincial Roman city.

The mosaics are the highlight. Floors in several rooms show animals, hunting scenes and figures from mythology, set in geometric borders, and some are well preserved given their age. Painted plaster survives in places, and the layout makes it easy to follow the route a visitor to the house would have taken from the entrance through the courtyards to the formal rooms. Walkways and a few upper vantage points help you read the plan as a whole.

Next to the villa are the ruins of the Temple of Dionysus and the Central Thermae, the public baths of the Roman town, with other remains from ancient Kos, a reminder that the modern town covers a dense layer of Hellenistic and Roman life. The house is close to the harbour and the Castle of the Knights, so it is easy to combine with a walk around Kos Town, and it makes a good companion to the Archaeological Museum of Kos, where other finds from the island are displayed. The Asklepion, the ancient healing sanctuary associated with Hippocrates, lies a few kilometres outside the town and deserves a separate trip.

Plan around the midday heat, since shade is limited among the courtyards, and check opening times locally before you go, as they change by season and many archaeological sites close on one weekday, often Tuesdays. A visit takes around an hour and suits anyone curious about Roman domestic life.