Among the UNESCO World Heritage sites, there are certainly the two villas of Tivoli, Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este, absolutely worth visiting. The first dates back to the Roman era, the period is that of Emperor Hadrian who wanted it as his imperial palace-residence, while the second dates back to the 16th century, commissioned and built by Cardinal Ippolito d’Este. They are therefore two Villas from different eras and a careful visit to both is recommended, perhaps not on the same day, so as not to unite eras distant from them and to be able to better savor their history. In the article we talk about Hadrian’s Villa. Built between 118 and 138 AD by Emperor Hadrian, the villa found an ideal location on a tufaceous bank bordered by two ditches, in a green area rich in water at the foot of the Tiburtini Mountains. The magnificent complex was spread over an area of approximately 120 hectares but the part that can be visited today is around 80. Hadrian’s architectural skills and his predisposition for beauty and culture influenced the layout of the Villa, which was built with techniques innovative and outside the canons of the time, including residences, spas, pavilions, nymphaeums and gardens. The biographer of Emperor Helios Spartian states that in the Villa Hadrian wanted to reproduce the places and monuments that had most impressed him during his travels in the provinces of the Empire.
Significant at the center of the Villa, the Canopus. This structure takes us back to ancient Egypt, it evokes an arm of the Nile river with its delta, which connected the city of Canopus of the same name, home to a famous temple dedicated to Serapis, with Alexandria, on the Nile delta. The identification with the Canopum mentioned in the Historia Augusta is due to Pirro Ligorio, a Neapolitan architect in the service of Ippolito d’Este. JC Grenier instead saw in it the symbolic re-enactment of Hadrian’s journey to Egypt, from which the emperor brought back numerous materials and statues, and during which Antinous, the very young boy over whom the emperor lost his head, died, of which Marguerite Yourcenar speaks to us in the novel “The Memoirs of Hadrian”.
Around the canal pool there is an elegant colonnade, with copies of famous Greek statues, such as the statues of the caryatids, Roman copies of those in the Erechtheion, which face the pool and not the visitors, thus creating an enchanting reflection on the water surface. Around the edges of the pool, we also notice stone sculptures of marine animals that live near the water such as crocodiles.
The large exedra at the end of the basin presents the imperial triclinium inside which is the stibadium, the triclinium bed; Banquets were held there, made spectacular by the water effects and jets that surrounded the diners. Among libraries, reading spaces, spas, residences, we access the Maritime Theater, one of the icons of Villa Adriana for its particularity and excellent state of conservation. The entrance has a pronaos with a columned portico and inside we find another circular portico with Ionic columns that revolves around a circular canal in the center of which there is a real island. On the opposite west side, the warmest, there was a miniature thermal plant, with a heated room and a pool for cold baths, from which you could go down with a few steps and possibly swim in the circular canal – hence the name Natatorium. The marble decoration is particularly refined with an extraordinary frieze with animals and sea monsters which was found in the sixteenth century during the excavations of Cardinal Farnese. From it the name “Teatro Marittimo” was born.
The island was the most private and exclusive place of the Villa, the secret refuge where Emperor Hadrian could completely isolate himself from the world, inside a very luxurious miniature villa equipped with every comfort. The extraordinary richness of the project and the sculptural decorations has been an object of admiration since the Renaissance, but the interest quickly took on a predatory character, so much so that the looting of marbles dispersed many parts of the Villa, which are now present in the main collections of the museums of Rome, Italy and Europe.
Francesco Fantini
