Rome in the Footsteps of an XVIIIth Century Traveller

Hadrian's biographers have left scarcely any record of the construction of a villa at Tibur, although it was considered the most magnificent in the world. Aurelius Victor only says that Hadrian, on his return from his first transcontinental journey, in a. d. 125, having settled the affairs of the empire and intrusted the cares of government to Aelius Caesar, retired to his villa, where "ut beatis locupletibus mos" - as is the custom with men favored by fortune - he gave himself up to the building of palaces, to the enlargement of his artistic collections, and to luxurious and profligate habits. The author of the "Vita" adds that the august architect, to perpetuate the remembrance of the places and edifices which had impressed him most during his journeys, had reproduced in the villa the Lyceum, the Academy, the Prytanaeum, and the Poecile from Athens; the Canopus from the old seaport of the Delta; the Lower Regions from the fancies of the poets concerning the home of future life; and even the Vale of Tempe, that jewel of Thessalian landscape. To this list may be added a Greek and a Latin theatre, an odeum, a stadium, a gymnasium, the Greek and Latin libraries, the imperial palace, the baths, and the quarters for guests and for the body-guard. The remains of all these edifices can easily be identified.
Rodolfo Lanciani - Wanderings in the Roman Campagna - 1909

Ruins of Villa Adriana at sunset

The consular dates impressed on the bricks and rooftiles show that the Tiburtinum Hadriani was begun in a. d. 125, and that the work lasted the whole of the ten years the Emperor was abroad. After his return in 136 he retired to his new possession, and continued to beautify it with new buildings, masterpieces of painting and sculpture, and water-works, until he was struck by fatal illness, and removed to Baiae, where he died on the tenth of July in the year 136. Lanciani
Hadrian became emperor on the death of Trajan in 117 and soon after he started building a residence for his otium (rest/leisure, but also introspection) on a piece of land near Tibur (Tivoli) owned by the family of his wife Vibia Sabina. He spent years travelling through almost all the provinces of the Empire from Britain to Morocco, from Greece to Egypt and in the design of his villa he introduced elements which reminded him of the sites he had seen in his journeys.
Some of the many works of art which embellished Villa Adriana are shown in a separate page.

Maritime Theatre from Lanciani's book

The buildings and their architectural ornamentations show evidence of having been largely restored towards the end of the third or the beginning of the fourth century. A case in point can be found in the so-called Marine Theatre, the most enigmatical structure of the villa. (..) It is a circular colonnade of the Ionic order, opening on a canal fifteen feet wide and four deep, lined with slabs of Carrara marble. The canal in its turn incloses a round island, covered with buildings so complicated in their plan as to baffle description. In two different places at the bottom of the canal traces can be seen of a mechanical contrivance which revolved on pivots or hinges fixed on the side of the island, while the outer end ran on wheels in a groove describing a quarter of a circle. Antiquarians have connected these remains with sluices for the regulation of the water in the canal; but this explanation is not satisfactory. It is simply a case of a pont tournant, by the manoeuvring of which communication with the island could be opened or closed at will. These facts have led me to consider the island as a place in which the Emperor could find absolute seclusion; and as his favorite occupation was painting and modelling in clay, I have no doubt that he used the island as a studio. About the end of the third century, when the memory of the imperial artist who had cherished the white marble island above all other retreats of the villa had faded away, the revolving bridge was abandoned, and a permanent one, of rough masonry, was substituted in its place. Lanciani

Musei Vaticani - Museo Gregoriano Egizio: View of Villa Adriana in ca 1840 in the hall which houses some statues in Egyptian attire from the villa; the building to the left is most likely Torre di Roccabruna

The later history of this place is not known. The discovery of a bust of Antoninus Pius in 1883, in the great hall of the larger palace, and of busts or heads of Faustina the Elder (the bust in the Rotunda of the Vatican), Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, and Elagabalus, made in the year 1770 in the Pantanello, show that the villa was occupied by the successors of Hadrian, at all events till the first quarter of the third century. But we can reach an even later date. The biographer of the Thirty Tyrants, c. 30, says that Zenobia was banished by Aurelian into the territory of Tivoli, in a place "not far from Hadrian's palace"; words which prove that the villa had not lost its name, and was kept up in good condition at the time of Constantine. (..) I may also remark that brick stamps with the well-known seal of the kilns of Diocletian and Constantine were found in the excavations of 1878. It has been said that Constantine began to despoil the villa in order to remove the pictures and statues to his new capital; that Totila took up his quarters there in 544, with his horde of barbarian plunderers, and that in the eighth century Aistulf the Langobard did the same. It has also been suggested that Hadrian's villa supplied the marbles and columns for the churches and houses of Tivoli, and that the statues, friezes, and reliefs were smashed to pieces and thrown into the lime-kilns. All this is simply a matter of conjecture, except as regards the lime-kilns, about which there is unfortunately no room for doubt. Lanciani

Eastern part of Villa Adriana with the "Hospitalia", a complex of small rooms where guests (not of the highest rank) were housed, in the foreground (see their floor mosaics)

It is certain that by the time of the visit of Pius II in 1461 the site was almost in its present condition. "Everything is made shapeless by age," he observes; "ivy covers those walls which formerly were hung with historical tapestries and draperies worked in gold; thorns and brambles fill the courts where tribunes clothed in purple sat in council, and serpents live in the chambers of queens; so transient is the nature of human things." (Commentaries, ed. 1584, p. 251.) (..) The villa was constantly and shamefully plundered from the time of Alexander VI (1492-1503) till the middle of last century. Lanciani
And now we returned to Rome from Tivoli. By the way, we were showed, at some distance, the city Praeneste, and the Hadrian villa, now only a heap of ruins; and so came late to our lodging.
John Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence - 1645
The emperor gave to the buildings and gardens of this famous villa the names of the most celebrated places. (..) There were also commodious apartments for a vast number of guests, all admirably distributed with baths, and every conveniency. Every quarter of the world contributed to ornament this famous villa, whose spoils have since formed the principal ornaments of the Campidoglio, the Vatican, and the palaces of the Roman Princes.
John Moore - A View of Society and Manners in Italy - 1781

(above) Casino Fede and Temple to Venus of Cnidus (a lost sanctuary to Venus in Caria, housing a famous statue of the goddess by Praxiteles); (below) inscription on the rear wall of the building celebrating the visit made by Austrian Emperor Joseph II and his brother Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany in March 1769

The largest and best section of the villa was purchased about the year 1730 by Count Fede, to whose plantations of pines and cypresses the place owes its present picturesqueness. It was bought by Pius VI for his nephew, Braschi-Onesti, whom he had endowed with a dukedom. Pietro Rosa, who was appointed superintendent of antiquities for the province of Rome at the revolution of 1870, acquired for the state the Braschi property as well as the olive grove of Roccabruna, and began a systematic excavation. The work was carried on from year to year until 1890, resulting in the laying bare of the most important buildings, except the Canopus, the Thermae, and the Stadium, which still lie buried under their cover of earth. Lanciani
Villa Adriana became a "must see" for XVIIIth century Grand Tour travellers, but strangely enough Goethe did not mention it in his Italian Journey, although he visited Tivoli in June 1787.

(left) Cypresses near the Philosophers' Hall; (right) XVIIIth century entrance to the archaeological area

The name of Count Giuseppe Fede is the one most often mentioned in connection with the fate of the villa in the eighteenth century. Having purchased the northern section of it, which extends from the present entrance gate to the Canopus, he explored in a desultory way the Greek theatre, the Nymphaeum, and the Palestra, bringing to light many famous marbles such as the two female hermae (n. 537 and 538 in the Rotunda of the Vatican Museum) which are supposed to personify Tragedy and Comedy; a group of Cupid and Psyche, and the Satyr in rosso antico, with eyes of coloured glass, now in the "Gabinetto delle maschere," n. 432. But the best title of the Fede family to the gratitude of all friends of Hadrian's villa lies in their having planted along the boundary line of their estate, and on either side of the central avenue, a double row of cypresses, the most magnificent specimens in Italy. It seems to us who love the villa above all other sites of the district of Tibur, that were it to lose this noble crown of evergreens, all our interest in it would die out. Lanciani
The Fede family, to whom most of Villa Adriana belonged in the XVIIIth century, gave it its current appearance; they cleared the weeds and planted olive trees and cypresses. Although Hadrian had designed formal gardens, these trees induce the right spirit for visiting the villa; the ancient buildings, fountains and porticoes were not aimed at impressing, but more at eliciting feelings of harmony and peacefulness.

Torre di Roccabruna

In astrology he considered himself so proficient that on the Kalends of January he would actually write down all that might happen to him in the whole ensuing year, and in the year in which he died, indeed, he wrote down everything that he was going to do, down to the very hour of his death.
Historia Augusta - The Life of Hadrian - Chapter 16
From the nights of my childhood, when Marullinus first pointed out to me the constellations above, my curiosity for the world of the spheres has not abated. (..) Here at the Villa I have built an observatory, but I can no longer climb its steps.
Marguerite Yourcenar - Memoirs of Hadrian - 1951
In 1924 Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour, a young Belgian lady, visited Villa Adriana for the first time. Nearly thirty years later, under the nom de plume of Marguerite Yourcenar, she wrote Memoirs of Hadrian, a novel about the life of the Emperor which she first thought of during the mornings she spent at Villa Adriana. You may wish to see a page with excerpts from that novel and late Autumn views of the main monuments of the villa which complement those in this page.
Archaeologists freed the "tower" from all later additions to reveal its original structure. It was a square building which supported some (lost) round structures. Because of its remote location at the south-western end of the villa it offered an unobstructed view of the sky and it is likely it was used by Hadrian as a point of observation.

(above) The olive grove of Roccabruna and Monte Gennaro in the background from the top of the tower; (below) the dome of S. Pietro from Villa Adriana

To Mr. West. Rome, May 20, 1740. (From Tivoli) the open Campagna of Rome, here and there a little castle on a hillock, and the city itself on the very brink of the horizon, indistinctly seen (being 18 miles off) except the dome of St. Peter's.
Thomas Gray's Letters from France and Italy in 1739-1741
About two miles farther Ponte Lucano a road turns off to the villa of Adrian. This imperial residence stood on a hill, with the extensive vale of Latium on one side, and a little deep glade called Tempe on the other. It commanded a delightful view of the Sabine mountains with Tibur here, and there a prospect of the Alban hills with their towers and forests; behind, the vale lost itself in distant mountains; in front, appeared Rome itself extended over its seven hills, and reflecting from all its palaces the beams of an evening sun.
John Chetwode Eustace's Classical Tour of Italy (in 1802) - publ. 1813
In the twenty years during which Hadrian's villa was under my care, such pains were taken to keep the olive grove in a wholesome condition that we could almost cover the expense of repairs and excavations with the proceeds of the crop. I remember especially a venerable old giant, the pride of the Oliveto di Roccabruna, known under the name of "l'Albero Bello," which would yield in good seasons as much as ten ordinary trees. Lanciani

Graffiti by XVIIIth century visitors. Augustin Pajou (1730-1809) was a French sculptor who studied at Accademia di Francia (he is known for having completed the reliefs of Fontaine des Innocents in Paris). Jacques Gondouin (1737-1818) was another French artist who studied in Rome and who eventually designed the Column of Place Vendome in Paris

On approaching it, I saw ruins overgrown with trees and bushes - mixt-reticular walls stretching along the side of a hill, in all the confusion of a demolished town. (..) On proceeding, however, its extent and its variety opened before me - baths, academies, porticos, a library, a palestra, a hippodrome, a menagery, a naumachia, an aqueduct, theatres, both Greek and Latin, temples for different rites, every appurtenance suitable to an imperial seat. (..) This too conspicuous beauty has been exposed even to worse enemies than time. Adrian's invidious successors neglected or unfurnished it. The Goths sacked it. The masons of the dark ages pounded its marbles into cement. Antiquarian popes and cardinals dug into its concealing continents, only to plunder it. Even the traveller's penknife attacks the stuccos, or the stripes painted on the vaults, and thus lays open the whole succession of "scoria".
Joseph Forsyth - Remarks on Antiquities, Arts, and Letters in Italy in 1802-1803
Many visitors wrote their name and the year of their visit on the stucco vaults of some buildings (see what they did at the Temple of Cape Sounion in Greece).

(above) Terrace of Poecile (aka Poikile), the name of a decorated porch in the Ancient Agorà of Athens, where Stoic philosophers used to meet; (below) Cento Camerelle (One Hundred Small Rooms)

January 12th. This day at an early hour I went to Tivoli with Colquhoun. (..) Traversing the Court of the Pecile, you come to the Barracks of the Imperial Guards. There are in there 200 Rooms - in rows, one above the other. Without these must have been two galleries supported with pilasters or pillars serving as means of general communication. Inside, every Room is separate, & there is no means of entering any but by means of the corridors, as may be seen in the convents of our Days; consequently, & as clearly appears from the irregularity of its structure, the internal communication betwn. the rooms themselves is modern.
Sir Charles Fergusson - Travel Journal in Italy 1824-1825
Villa Adriana is not a royal palace, but it rather calls to mind the pavilions in the last courtyard of Topkapi Sarayi at Istanbul. Its terraces have different orientations; some have a view towards Rome, others towards Tivoli or the Castelli Romani. There is not an evident hierarchy among the buildings: the smaller ones are not aligned in order to emphasize the larger ones.
It is evident by the many porticoes which flanked the terraces that Hadrian enjoyed walking along them with his friends, as Aristotle and the other peripatetic philosophers used to do in Athens. At first sight one does not realize that the terraces are to a great extent artificial and are supported by imposing substructures which housed the many servants who worked at the villa.

Domes of the Philosophers' Hall (left) and of the Serapeum of the Canopus (right)

Most of the main buildings were covered by domes and the passages between them had barrel vaults. For this reason Renaissance architects came to Villa Adriana to study this sort of real life catalogue of construction techniques; the gigantic dome of the Serapeum is a precursor of the rib vaults which are typical of medieval cathedrals (most likely Borromini had in mind this dome when he designed the interior of S. Ivo alla Sapienza).

Dome of Heliocaminus (solar furnace, an early heating system based on exploiting solar rays)

The search for antiquities was taken up in 1780 by the brothers Giambattista and Francesco Piranesi. The best works of art they found have been illustrated by that celebrated engraver in the volume entitled "Vasi e Candelabri." Lanciani
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was another artist who fell in love with Villa Adriana; he was the first to draw an accurate map of the site and several of his engravings show views of the site, e.g. the Philosophers' Hall (it opens in another window). He reconstructed marble pieces of furniture from minute fragments which he found at Villa Adriana; some of them were bought at high price by British travellers.

(left) A curved wall projecting from Philosophers' Hall (you may wish to compare it with the façade of Borromini's S. Maria dei Sette Dolori); (right) detail of the Doric Atrium

I shall not accompany the visitor in his inspection of the single ruins; they are still beautiful, apart from their classic name and purpose, and they are so exquisitely set in their frame of green that archaeological information about them seems out of place. (..) In beginning his walk the visitor will do well to remember, first, that Hadrian's original structures are all of opus reticulatum, made of prisms of reddish tufa; secondly, that the apparent confusion in the grouping of the various edifices arises from the fact that the connecting links between them, such as paths, gardens, terraces, canals, lawns, have disappeared; thirdly, that the feeling of lonesomeness which the visitor experiences in his solitary rambling grows from the fact that no flower beds brighten his eye, and no sound of rushing water reaches his ear; and besides, an olive grove is naturally a lonesome assemblage of trees. Lanciani
Trilithon (three stones - two vertical stones supporting a horizontal one) is a characteristic of the architecture of Ancient Greece and it applies in a more general sense to all buildings erected by placing large stones one upon the other. Trilithon was not much employed at Villa Adriana which is a celebration of Roman masonry skills and in particular of opus reticulatum, a thick wall made up of small blocks of tufa or bricks arranged along diagonal lines. Even where the design follows the Greek trilithon pattern, pilasters and entablatures have a brickwork inner structure.

The Canopus, a reference to an Egyptian harbour near Alexandria which housed a temple to Serapis

The building called the Canopus was intended to imitate the Egyptian Temple in the City of that name, & was dedicated to Seraphis; its name is sufftly well justified by the discovery of sundry Egyptian Statues, or such as appertain to the worship of that God, wh. are now to be seen at the Capitol, in the room called the Sala del Canopo (they were moved to Museo Gregoriano Egizio). The plain before the building was covered with water, & within it are still seen the room of the priests, & a painted corridor, by wh. canals passed. Fergusson
According to the reconstructed model of Villa Adriana, some buildings were preceded by a small porch having on top the traditional Greek triangular tympanum. As a matter of fact all these porches do not exist any longer, so that curved shapes definitely prevail on straight lines. In the Canopus even the classic entablature is disrupted; the new resulting shape is known as Serliana, after the Renaissance architect Sebastiano Serlio who described it in a treatise. It can be noticed also in a temple dedicated to the Emperor at Ephesus.

(left) An arm of the Cryptoporticus (underground passage - see that at "Domus Tiberiana" on the Palatine); (right) latrines outside the Firemen's Barracks

To run such a large complex of buildings required not only a crowd of servants and guards, but also well designed facilities and in particular a network of underground passages to ensure that these people performed their duties without interfering with the life of the Emperor and of his guests.
The servants and the guards were housed in the substructures supporting the terraces or in buildings which were hidden by one of the many nymphaea (large fountains) placed in the courtyards or the terraces.
Villa Adriana could rely on an ample supply of water as it was located near the aqueducts which supplied Rome.

Firemen's Barracks

My final advice to the reader is never to attempt to visit Tibur and the villa in the same day; he would not be able to enjoy either one or the other. Lanciani
The image used as background for this page shows a bust of Hadrian found at Villa Adriana and now at Musei Vaticani.

See the works of art which embellished Villa Adriana or have a stroll through it reading Memoirs of Hadrian or see it at night.

Other pages on Tivoli:
Roman Tivoli
Medieval and Renaissance Tivoli
Villa d'Este - the Palace
Villa d'Este - the Gardens
Villa d'Este and Tivoli in the 1905 paintings by Alberto Pisa

Move on to the next step in your tour of the Environs of Rome: Palestrina.