Villa rustica

The Villa rustica in Peiting is a Roman farmstead from the imperial age, standing on 2.5 hectares in the Lech valley. It was built between the 2nd and 4th centuries and once belonged to the province of Raetia. The main building has an unusual layout for sites north of the Alps, with an atrium instead of corner projections. Two apses flank the central hall, and the bath wing contained a hypocaust floor-heating system. Excavations in 1956, 1962 and between 1984 and 1989 uncovered painted wall plaster, fragments of glass windows and fine red-slip pottery.

The site lies south of Peiting town centre, reached by the Kreuther Weg off the B17 bypass. Nearby, archaeologists suspect a junction of the ancient road linking the Via Raetia to the Via Claudia Augusta. In 2004 the hypocaust was enclosed in a glass shelter so it can be viewed year-round. A small herb garden with information boards now surrounds the ruins, and a local association founded in 1992 maintains the remains. The association was awarded a silver medal by Upper Bavaria for its volunteer work in heritage conservation.

Visitors walk past the exposed main building and its two curved apses into the sheltered hypocaust chamber. Terra-cotta roof tiles and sections of mosaic floor still mark the original rooms. Labels in the herb garden explain which Roman vegetables and medicinal plants once grew there. The site sits beside meadows where the first remains were found in 1956, giving a quiet setting for imagining life on a Roman estate.