FLIESSEM
Germany.
The villa of Fliessem
lies on a SE slope ca. 5 km N-NE of Bitburg (Beda
Vicus) and 800 m E of the Roman road from Trier to
Cologne. About 380 x 133 m in area, it comprises a
manor house and walled farmyard with stalls, barns, and
servants' quarters. The site of the ruins, known locally
as Weilerbusch, was exposed in 1825 and revealed, in
addition to a settlement of the Late Iron Age, a villa
with 66 chambers, halls, and rooms, partly heated by
hypocausts. Originally a porticoed villa with wings, it
was enlarged before the 4th c. by rebuilding and additions. On the W, S, and E sides it was provided with
projections and corner pavilions, while on the valley
side the ground was artificially terraced and a cryptoporticus built with a colonnade above it, so that the
building offered richly articulated facades on three sides.
In the area NW of the house were a small bath and a
larger, later bath complex 100 sq. m in area, with apodyterium, frigidarium, tepidarium and caldarium, sudatorium and praefurnium. Three of the larger rooms in the E
tract were heated and had mosaic floors with geometric
ornaments—rosettes, rhomboids, volute-panels—severe in
composition and delicately colored. Of 13 original mosaics, four are preserved in situ. On the slope opposite, in
the entrance hall, is a sanctuary with two rectangular
Gallo-Roman temples with ambulatories, dedicated, according to votive coins, to Diana and Minerva. After
its flowering in the 2d c. (as dated by the mosaics), the
estate remained under cultivation to the end of the Roman period. Destroyed in the 5th c., the community was
resettled by the Franks as indicated by a Frankish stone
sarcophagus found in the villa.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
E. Gose, “Der Tempelbezirk von Otrang
bei Fliessen,”
Trierer Zeitschr. 7 (1932) 123; P. Steiner,
“Das römische Landgut bei Fliessem,”
Führungsblätter
des Landesmuseums Trier 8 (1939).
H. CÜPPERS
