The Barco Borghese, scenically overlooking the Roman Campagna and Rome, is one of the most fascinating archaeological and landscape complexes in the Castelli Romani. Located near Monte Porzio Catone, along the road leading to Villa Mondragone, the Barco appears as a vast quadrangular esplanade, surrounded by a Renaissance-era wall and adorned by a monumental tufa fountain. It is still overlooked by historic 16th-century farmhouses, evidence of the phase when the place was owned first by the Altemps and then by the Borghese, who incorporated it into the so-called Burghesianum along with the neighboring villas.
The name “barco” derives from the Renaissance term used for a hunting enclosure, a function the site assumed from 1567. But the most astonishing aspect of the Barco Borghese is hidden beneath the surface: the western third of the esplanade is in fact supported by an extraordinary sequence of more than 180 vaulted rooms, articulated on two long parallel corridors, dating back to the mid-first century BC. These monumental substructures, made of Roman concrete with segmental barrel vaults, constitute an imposing basement, traditionally attributed to an imperial Roman villa.
The most widely accepted archaeological hypotheses link it to the vast state estates of Agrippina, Nero and Domitian, which extended between Frascati and Cocciano. Some of the interior rooms preserve original Roman epigraphs, traced by brush, engraved or made in charcoal directly on the plaster. One of the sides of the complex, with classrooms adorned with Doric semicolumns, is now used as a stage backdrop for outdoor events and performances, offering a unique combination of archaeology and contemporary art.
Remaining inaccessible until 2005, the Barco Borghese can now be visited thanks to an evocative underground itinerary, which takes visitors on a discovery of a place where Roman history, Renaissance landscape and archaeological mystery are intertwined. A place still partly to be deciphered, which preserves intact its aura of majesty and silent beauty.