The remains of the Villa di Livia , wife of the emperor Augustus , were found at the end of the nineteenth century in the locality of Prima Porta on the 9th mile of the Via Flaminia. The frescoes, which were brought to the National Roman Museum in 1951 for conservation reasons, decorated the walls of a large semi-underground wing probably serving as a summer triclinium, i.e. a living room and banquet room used in the warmer months. They constitute the oldest example of continuous garden painting , datable by style to the decade 30-20 BC. In the frescoes of the Villa di Livia the images are organized according to two distinct visual perceptions : the fence of reeds and the marble balustrade, placed in horizontal, and the trees in the niches that rhythm the walls vertically. A variety of naturalistically reproduced plants and birds fit into this scheme. This pictorial genre testifies to the prestige role assumed by the garden, ordered according to the canons of the ars topiaria (art of the gardens), in the villae and domus of the late Republican and Augustan periods. The theme found particular success in the figurative program of Augustus, who saw in the prosperity of nature the best allusion to felicitas temporum, consequent to the Pax Augusta.

The statue of the Lancellotti Discobolus depicts an athlete caught in the moment before the discus is thrown. The only almost entirely preserved example of the type, the statue is a faithful replica of one of the most admired works of antiquity : the bronze Discobolus by the Greek sculptor Myron (c. 450 BC). Discovered in 1781 in Rome, on the Esquiline at Villa Palombara, the Lancellotti Discobolus was for a long time part of the private collection of the Lancellotti family (hence the name) in the Palazzo Massimo Lancellotti in Rome. Purchased in 1938 by Adolf Hitler, it remained in the Gipsoteca of Munich until 1948. Since 1953 it has been housed in the National Roman Museum. Of the Discobolus Lancellotti the right calf, the fingers of the left hand, the oval base which includes the ancient plinth and perhaps a lower end of the disc have been restored; the right arm and left foot are integrated (reattached). The Discobolus Lancellotti is a Roman copy which, due to its stylistic rendering, can be attributed to the mid- second century. AD The statue reflects the distinctive high standards of commissioning of the Esquiline sculptures - including the group of Athena and Marsyas of the Vatican Museums, also by Mirone - in the area where the Horti Lamiani, owned by imperial since the first half of the first century. A.D