Professional paper
Villa rustica – a settlement on Bol’s Golden Cape
Zrinka Buljević
orcid.org/0000-0003-3037-1876
Abstract
The villae rusticae were the primary hubs of Roman-era
agriculture and the Roman lifestyle outside of the urban communities
which they supplied with food and other goods. The
list of villae rusticae on the island of Brač has 91 registered sites.
On the island’s steep and rocky southern side which, according
to Pliny, was renowned for its goats (capris laudata
Brattia), a large fertile surface is situated around Bol, where
two villas are known to have been adjacent to the coast. One
was located at the Dominican Monastery of St. Mary of Mercy,
at a site where the small medieval Church of Sts. John and
Theodore was built, while the other was on the narrow peninsula
known as Zlatni rat (‘Golden Cape’). Vineyards covered
Zlatni rat until the mid-20th century, when a pine grove was
planted on that land. A tourism facility was then built there
in the 1980s. Today all that is visible of the Roman agricultural
estate is a preserved cistern (piscina) at a somewhat elevated
position inside the villa. To the east, the walls of what was
likely a sheltered dock were once visible in the waters of the
cove between Borak and the Rat peninsula. It had been made
to facilitate maritime trade for the Roman villa’s products. To
the west, near Rat, a necropolis containing the graves of the
villa’s residents was discovered. It is believed that there are
architectural remains of a settlement that covered the entire
cape. Life in rustic villas was reorganized in Late Antiquity,
so it is possible that the farm estate on Zlatni rat grew into a community. The Early Christian Church of St. Paul near Zlatni
rat was mostly likely built at that time.
Keywords
villa rustica, piscina, Zlatni rat, Bol, Brač.
Hrčak ID:
344339
URI
Publication date:
1.12.2025.
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