Tivoli, Italy
"città presso il salto d'acqua" - Varro Rome's seven hills collect in the Latium plain, a flat expanse reaching north to Umbria, west and south to the Tyrrhenian Sea, and east towards the Abruzzi mountains. From the slopes of Tivoli one can look twenty miles west towards the steaming city of Rome with a complacent sigh. Nowhere is it better to contemplate the heat of Rome than from the cool precipice of Tivoli, where the River Aniene pours out of the Abruzzi. In Tivoli the air holds the wet, cool spray of the Aniene falls. The biting, disease-ridden insects that feed on the populus Romanum below do not dare to rise to the gray hills above. For this reason the great and famous have traditionally made country homes in and near Tivoli. The Emperor Hadrian built Villa Adriana, the largest but only one in a multitude of exclusive retreats in the area. |
At left, untrimmed travertine (limestone) cut from the quaries near Tivoli.
| Dating to circa 60 B.C., the Temple of Sibyl (Vesta? Tiburnus?) was commissioned by Lucius Gellius. The peristyle of eighteen fluted Corinthian columns was of travertine material found in abundance in Tivoli. The design and workmanship are superior and show a knowledge of ancient Greek round temples such as the tholoi at Epidauros and at Delphi. The department of the Laxio (region of Rome) is presently restoring the temple. |
Links to websites on Rome and the Regione Lazio
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The Temple of Sibyl was one of a number of temples on the ancient acropolis at Tivoli. Only this one and a small rectangular temple next to it remain. Our fascination for the beauty of the place was probably identical to that of the emperors, poets, and philosophers who frequented Tivoli: Augustus, Maecenas, Hadrian, Horace, and other illustrati. The precipice hovers over a golden bowl of vegetation and the Aniene falls. |
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| Tivoli's medieval doors open to a history as distinguished as its windows to the antique era. From the 6th century A.D., the town walls harbored a commercial center, and many belltowers, turret houses, bridges, and administrative halls were built, many of which still stand. The Cathedral of St. Lawrence (6th century and rebuilt in 1635) stands on the site of the ancient forum. |
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| Cardinal Hippolyte d'Este, appointed Life Governor of Tivoli at the conclave of Pope Julius III in 1560, built a Renaissance villa described by his friends as a "poetry of wonders." Above, you see the original entrance path that that visitors would take after entering the gates of the villa off the via del Colle. The Cardinal, son of Lucretia Borgia and Alfonso I d'Este, commissioned Pirro Ligorio to design what would become one of the most successful and beautiful water gardens of his time or ours. Ligorio found the nearby antique villa of Hadrian (Villa Adriana) a fruitful browsing spot for antiquities with which to decorate the garden. The Catholic cardinal was not opposed to using the pagan's sculptures, basins, and building stones for his retreat. The villa was later owned by the Hapsburgs and became the possession of the Italian government in 1918. |
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