---
title: "Imperial Villa - Pompeii Online"
description: "The ancient city of Pompeii: Information on visiting hours, tickets, guides, online tickets, tourist itineraries, news and much more."
url: "https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places/suburban-area/imperial-villa"
date: "2026-09-15T08:46:56+00:00"
language: "en-GB"
---

#  Imperial Villa VIII.1.a

The **Imperial Villa**, also known as the **Suburban Villa at Marina Gate**, is one of Pompeii’s most spectacular residences with panoramic views. It stands immediately outside the ancient walls, near Marina Gate, on terraces descending along the city’s western slope. This position gave its residential rooms dramatic views towards the sea and the Bay of Naples.

The villa was built during the **1st century AD**, taking advantage of a sector where the fortifications had already lost their original defensive function. The complex included porticoes, gardens and large reception rooms, embellished with marble floors and wall paintings of exceptional quality.

Particularly famous is the **oecus**, a large reception hall that preserves the fresco of the **Fall of Icarus**. The scene depicts the tragic conclusion of the myth of Daedalus and Icarus and is one of the villa’s best-known decorative works.

Other rooms were decorated with refined wall paintings and motifs drawn from the natural world. The western portico, for example, yielded a **Third Style painting of a garden**, also documented today in the collections of the Antiquarium of Boscoreale.

The Imperial Villa belongs to the group of large residences built along Pompeii’s western and southern slopes. These houses took advantage of the plateau’s steep changes in level to extend over several storeys and create panoramic terraces, offering a concept of domestic space very different from that of the domus in the heart of the city.

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[View this location on the Pompeii Buildings and Places map](https://www.pompeionline.net/en/buildings-and-places)

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