I’ve spent 20 years writing about travel and interiors and never seen anything as astonishing as the Villa Romana del Casale. It makes most Hollywood homes look like cardboard.  It is a 4th century BC Roman villa in the center of Sicily. And although it is partly ruined, it gives an extraordinary sense of how wealthy Romans lived.  The beautiful columns, intensely painted walls and heavily mosaiced floors (3,500 square meters of mosaics spread over 40 rooms – so many that you become blasé by the end). They depict everything from girls in bikinis (who knew the skimpy two piece was invented back then?) and groovy geometric patterns, to parades of elephants, tigers and camels walking up the 20 meter long ‘Corridor of the Great Hunt’. My images do it scant justice.

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