The Ancient Roman Mosaic of Lierna on Lake Como or Lierna Mosaic it is a floor dating back to ancient Rome dating back to the 1st century (Augustan age) discovered in 1876 in Lierna on Lake Como, partly in a vineyard cultivated by the lake and partly in the cellar of an old café in the village's Piazzetta. Along with the precious floor, belonging to a noble villa of Ancient Rome, Roman columns, capitals, and a Roman wall at a depth of over 7.5 meters have been found, as well as numerous coins, objects, ceramics and jewelry.
The floor is now preserved in the Archaeological Museum of Lecco.
Description
The decoration presents a composition of hexagons arranged in a honeycomb, outlined with a row of small dark tiles on a light background, internally filled with a dark hexagon with a light flower with six petals tangent to the vertices of the hexagon or a star with six points composed of a dark hexagon with, in the center, another dark hexagon delimited by six white triangles with lower vertices tangent to each other. The hexagons with the same internal decoration follow one another in alternating bands; in the preserved fragment, only the hexagons fielded by flowers are halved at the edge which, starting from the inside, is composed of a row of dark tiles, a band of three light tiles arranged perpendicularly to each other and a dark band, initially composed of a band of three tesserae with a similar arrangement and then of weaves with an oblique warp. The smallness of the preserved portion does not allow us to have an idea of the extension of the mosaic, nor of the possible presence of a central emblem.
Controversy
Unlike what is believed, the floor is of an important Roman villa, but it does not belong to the Villa Commedia di Plinio il Giovane which, is located on the same street but more distant and built "as is customary in Positano" or on a terracing carved into the top of a rock overlooking Lake Como.
Local legends handed down for centuries tell that the Golden calf adored by the local population, which dates back to the Celtic era, is also buried in Lierna.