A Roman villa, to which the modern name Armira has been given, was excavated near the town of Ivailovgrad (Bulgaria); in antiquity, the villa belonged to the chora of Adrianople.

The villa was excavated by the late Dr. Yanka Mladenova, who published some of the mosaics, but not all of them. The purpose of the present paper is to make more widely known the whole of the villa pavement mosaic decoration because it provides evidence for the contacts between the Balkan provinces and Italy in the second century. The variety of patterns and motifs applied in these mosaics reveals the influence that Roman art exerted on the decor of elite houses in those territories which had become subject to active romanisation by the time of Trajan and Hadrian.

Most of the mosaics are in opus tessellatum, although there are some remains of opus sectile as well. The walls were decorated with marble revetment and paintings. The villa was in use until the ravaging incursions of the Goths in the 370s and was presumably destroyed during the battle of Adrianople (378).