Getty Villa

IT was 1973, and eccentric billionaire Jean Paul Getty was planning an ambitious folly for his property in the Palisades: a precise replica of Villa dei Papiri, a grand home destroyed in Herculaneum in AD 79, that would house his collection of Greek and Roman antiquities. He hired the architectural firm of Langdon Wilson to create the villa, and noted landscape architects Emmet Wemple and Denis Kurutz to design the 64 acres around it.

Oceanus, ancient god of the sea, rises from the deep with titanic force. His hair is a mass of heavy, wet tendrils, like seaweed dragged onto shore by the surf.

NO matter if Herakles has fallen off your holiday card list. Never mind if you don't know an alabastron from a loutrophoros. Odds are you will soon find yourself at the Getty Villa on the edge of Malibu, maybe trailing a loved one, maybe squiring out-of-towners.

Finally answering one of the art world's most frequently asked questions, the J. Paul Getty Trust has announced that Jan. 28 is the opening date of the Villa in Malibu.

As Meryl Friedman plowed through ancient comedy's greatest hits, looking for 21st century AD laughs in 3rd century BC material, she began to wonder whether funny things really did happen on the way to the Forum.

On a summer day in 1964, the 60-foot trawler Ferruccio Ferri pushed off from this port before dawn. It motored southeast, cutting through the Adriatic Sea toward a submerged outcropping where fish gathered, 32 nautical miles out.