ROMAN AGE
Very little is known about the Roman conquest, but it is undisputed that the ancient Etruscan city was within the political orbit of Rome in the 2nd century BC.
In the 2nd century BC a huge project was launched to re-develop the city and the central area of the Acropolis.
Three large temples overlooked the space where the forum of the city once stood; from here, a ragusane stone road – incorporated in an orthogonal system, leads to a monumental terrace, marked by a façade with blind arches, known as the Le Logge.
The road shows no signs of the prolonged passage of chariot wheels and its steepness suggests that it was probably only used by pedestrians and on solemn occasions as a sacred road connecting the temples with the Le Logge, a sacred monumental building.
The road skirted a luxurious domus, decorated with polychrome mosaic and earthenware floors with coloured marble inserts; the floors and a part of the walls have been conserved in several rooms of this domus. The domus had a small thermae, with a changing room and a hot plunge bath and steam room (caldarium) with a tub, that has been lost, on an ipocausto (raised floor, under which the heat of the praefurnia fire was directed).
Le Logge had a spectacular view over the temples: a room decorated with painted stuccoes and plasters to imitate marble and mosaic floors, edged with a red border and embellished with a central perspectival cube crest made of local marble. The extraordinary decoration has been recovered and reconstructed; at the Archaeological Museum you can admire part of the reconstructed floor and the polychrome crest. The room was not conserved but from the Belvedere you can look out from the terrace of Le Logge, just as they did in ancient times.
There were various environments on the terrace, including a monumental nymphaeum with two hypogea areas and a thermae, now being excavated. The monumental complex has been conserved up to an extraordinary height and it is still possible to see its floor plan; the terracotta tub for the cold bath is still intact as well as part of the floor with polychrome mosaic and terracotta bricks laid in a herringbone shape. In a recess there is the so-called Mosaico dei Neri, an extraordinary piece in polychrome mosaic with black busts, waves and dolphins and geometric patterns.
Again, one of the floor alcoves in the nymphaeum on the terrace of Le Logge had an extraordinary mosaic with a marine theme and a scene depicting a shipwreck, known as the Pesci mosaic that can be admired at the Archaeological Museum in Piombino: the building complex as a whole was probably a sanctuary dedicated to the goddess Venus.
The war between Mario and Silla was a decisive moment in the history of Populonia: the city sided with Mario and was subject to severe suppression by the victor Silla. From that moment on, the city gradually lost its architectonic splendour. Populonia continued to be inhabited but gradually lost its prestige and strategic importance: at the end of the 1st century BC, the Greek geographer Strabo spoke of an Acropolis of which only the temples and a lively port and beautiful countryside remained.
The archaeological digs on the beach of the Gulf of Baratti indicate how, during the Imperial Age (2nd-3rd century BC) and in the Late Antiquity (4th-6th century BC), life still thrived on the shores of the gulf around the road that connected the low city of Populonia to the via Aurelia, located inland.
Populonia is referred to as a dead city in the poignant verses of the Roman poet and prefect Rutilio Namaziano in a poem that recounts his return journey to Gaul by sea between 415 and 417 AD, after the sack of Rome in 410 AD.
