From 1992 onwards the site of Ossaia, on the border of the territories of Cortona and Perugia, has been the object of excavations (ongoing) by the Universities of Perugia and Alberta (Edmonton, Canada), in collaboration with the Comune of Cortona.

The excavations examined the residential sector of a luxury villa, built on a north-south alignment, which developed over a period of time between the 1st century B.C. and the 5th century A.D. In an earlier period (5th-2nd century B.C.) the terrace where the villa was situated had been the site of an Etruscan sanctuary with a rural settlement nearby. The size of the villa’s original layout, datable to the 1st century B.C., is uncertain. On the basis of the tiles marked with the stamp of a certain Caius Avilius or Annius Capito, the original villa can be placed within a limited section of the site where there were early pavements in lithostroton and a white and black mosaic in the northern area. The first monumental phase of the complex dates to the mid 1st century B.C. Judging by the brick stamps found over the three excavation areas, which include the reception rooms, this work was undertaken by the family of the Vibii Pansae.

The area excavated in 2005 and continued in 2006 comprises a portico with an elegant scutulum mosaic which opened onto an internal garden. The summer complex consisted of a corridor providing service access to the large reception room. The corridor separated the large room, both physically and functionally, from the rest of what seems to be the villa’s main entrance. The northern reception area was linked to the central residential part by a terrace wall. The second phase, datable to between the end of the 1st-3rd century A.D., several transformations are attested in which various parts of the residential quarters of the late Republican-Augustan villa were taken over for productive purposes which seem to coincide with an increase in agricultural activity.

During the 3rd century A.D. (between the late Severan period and the beginning of Gallienus’s reign as attested by the small laminae with Imperial portraits found) the villa was restructured. It was decorated with red chequered mosaic with a Dionysiac emblem, perhaps for a reception room, probably a coenatio. The villa underwent more radical alterations in the Constantinian period. On the basis of the pottery recovered the complex showed evidence of continued occupation at least until the 5th century A.D. (MiBAC)