In the summer of 2006, University of Maryland Professor Emeritus Lindley Vann and 19 architecture students traveled to the Bay of Naples to explore an ancient city, lost in ash. Over the next 20 years, factions of students returned each summer to participate in a global effort to excavate and document one of the last surviving Italian villas that once catered to the Roman elite.
The culmination of their work, meticulously captured in pen and ink, is the subject of a new exhibit at the University of Maryland’s Kibel Gallery, opening October 3. “Stabiae and the Visual Preservation of Architecture” features roughly 70 completed student drawings of the surviving frescos from Stabiae’s Villa Arianna, offering a rare glimpse of the lifestyles and luxuries of Roman high society, before the party was violently interrupted by Mt. Vesuvius.
“The Villa Arianna represents the state-of-the art of frescos from that time and really demonstrates the peak of affluence and the aspirational culture of the Bay of Naples,” said Associate Professor Joseph Williams, who led the documentation of Stabiae from 2019-2024 and curated the exhibit with Kibel Gallery Director Lindsey May and M.Arch student Lauren McNamara.
Nestled at the foot of Mount Vesuvius on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, Stabiae was once a paradise for the rich and famous of Roman society, a collection of monumental villas and expansive, lush gardens overlooking the bay. The eruption of Mt. Vesuvius buried the holiday mainstay under two meters of volcanic ash in 79AD, where it remained interred until partial excavation efforts began in the 1960s. In the late 1990s, the University of Maryland became a founding member of the Restoring Ancient Stabiae Foundation, launching an effort that introduced hundreds of students to the world of architectural research and Roman archeology.
In 2011, the University of Maryland homed in on Stabiae’s Villa Arianna, which had never been comprehensively documented, racing against the time and elements to capture its intricate centuries-old frescos. Using a combination of sketching, measurements, and more recently, digital technology, students painstakingly captured details unseen by cameras, such as grooves etched in the plaster to guide geometric patterns.
The documentation was completed in 2024 and was compiled into a book and published this past summer by Williams, with contributions by nine co-authors and numerous student illustrators. The project, which was shepherded over the years by Vann, Professor Matthew Bell, Williams and others, offered an unparalleled study abroad experience, said Bell, where students could exercise their newly acquired skills to engage history in a hands-on way and contribute to a growing body of knowledge.
“Joseph did an amazing job at empowering students to engage with these historic artifacts in so many ways, from traditional hand drawings to more state-of-the-art technology,” said Bell, who has been involved in the Stabiae project since 1997. “It really showed them what they could do with their education in terms of recording a really important archeological site.”
The exhibition also showcases the history of the Stabiae program and the methodology—from hand sketches to measurements—used to produce the final drawings. The project, said Williams, underscores the vital role architects can play in archeology, particularly in regions like Pompeii, where ruins were are excavated early on so fast, it becomes a desperate game of catch up before they deteriorate, and fade from history.
“Documentation of excavated structures is every bit as central to archeological discovery as continuing to dig,” he said. “What’s needed is not necessarily a trowel, but the architect’s pen.”