water flowed. Shortly after the construction, however, these niches-fountains were walled up, probably due to their instability. At the south-east corner an annex protruding towards the road is the vestibulum or main entrance of ​​the villa from the via Praenestina below from which a staircase lead to the terrace. The porticoes employed an architectural novelty, the flat arch, which allowed straight architraves to be used without expensive monolithic marble lintels. Stuccos In monumental room XVIII overlooking the garden an enormous quantity of fragments of stuccos was found collapsed on the floor, clearly from the decorative band in the upper area of the walls and above the marble covering. They are of the highest artistic quality for the variety of subjects, execution technique and surface gilding, found only in imperial villas or those of patricians. The stuccos were divided into rich bands decorated with geometric, floral or figurative motifs and panels with slender perspective architectures, within which are standing and seated figures of divinities. The architectural features stand out for the execution of details of the bases and pediments of the columns. Marbles In addition to the more common ones, African, cipollino, giallo antico, pavonazzetto, portasanta and various granites, porphyries and serpentines, breccia di Sciro and Egyptian black porphyry were used. Decorative Techniques The transport and assembly of material and marble to this difficult and distant site from Rome was not an easy and inexpensive operation, only feasible with the imperial commission. Marbles from quarries in Italy and the African and Eastern provinces were often marked with engraved or red-painted inscriptions relating to the place of extraction and to the client. The processing or finishing of the pieces took place on site: the assembly phases are documented by acronyms or numbers engraved on capitals, bases, shelves, to indicate the place where they were to be placed or were the initials of names; elsewhere were marks in black charcoal or drawings made by the workers, such as the donkey that appears on the reverse of a slab. An interesting graffiti, engraved with square and compasses, was discovered on a facing slab of room XIX depicting either a niche with an apsidal basin or the plan of an apsidal room. Upper Terrace A geophysical survey identified underlying structures of the upper terrace which was shown to be the private residential part of the villa, including thermal baths and an elliptical structure, probably a