Villa near Mount Vesuvius may be where Augustus, Rome's 1st emperor, died

The ruins of a Roman villa near Mount Vesuvius, discovered under the remnants of another villa built above it many years later, may have been where Augustus, the first Roman emperor, drew his last breath, archaeologists say.

The earlier villa, which excavations suggest was inhabited before the first century A.D., seems to have been destroyed in the devastating eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79, and the later villa was built there in the second century.

Researchers at the University of Tokyo have worked at the site for more than 20 years and now hope further excavations will establish that the earlier villa is indeed the place where Augustus died in A.D. 14.

"Our site is probably the only one, or one of only the very few, possibilities that we have," Mariko Muramatsu, an archaeologist at the University of Tokyo who's leading the project, told Live Science.

She noted that the site corresponds with writings by the Roman historians Tacitus, Suetonius and Cassius Dio, who recorded that Augustus died in A.D. 14 at his family's villa near Nola. But the precise location of the villa is unknown, Muramatsu said. The modern town of Nola is about 5 miles (8 kilometers) northeast of the archaeological site at SoMMA Vesuviana, on the northern slopes of Vesuvius.

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Under the volcano

The second-century villa at SoMMA Vesuviana was destroyed by an eruption of Vesuvius in the fifth century, and its buried ruins were discovered in 1929. They were identified as the possible location of Augustus' villa, but a lack of funding prevented the site from being explored further.