The pouring rain wakes us up. Weather predictions say we won’t see the sun anymore during our holiday. But we are unstoppable. Today’s programme says Tivoli, summer retreat for ancient Romans and the Renaissance rich. It’s a 30 minute drive, and luckily, the rainy clouds disapear when we’re in the car. There is even some sun.
We start with Villa Adriana, the sprawling estate of Emperor Hadrian in 120 AD. It is the most imposing and complex Roman villa known. It’s huge, bigger than Pompei, with dozens of buildings, mostly ruins. We see some small pieces of mosaic on the floor or paint on the ceilings. Some pillars still stand, giving a sneak peak into the grandeur of the Villa. The Maritime theatre is one of our favourite spots.
There’s also a casino, several bath houses, ponds and temples…. It takes us two hours to see it all.
We drive a bit further up to visit the 16th-century Villa d’Este, a Renaissance retreat famous for its landscaped gardens and lavish fountains.
The inside is nicely decorated, the frescos on the walls are very well preserved. Cleo takes 360 pictures in every room. There is an exhibition of the Beijing Summer Palace, and we have to laugh as the pictures are so peaceful without a single person in it, while we remember it as complete chaos because of the millions of Chinese people pushing each other and hitting us with their selfie sticks.
The highlight is the garden with hundreds of fountains. Cleo continues her photography and captures every single fountain, spouts, water jet, basin and canal. All working entirely by the force of gravity, without pumps.
Tim forgot his spare camara battery, so we have to go with Cleo’s camera the rest of the day. We bought the villae pass which included the two villas and also the sanctuary of Hercules. So we head there next, it is at the bottom of Tivoli so we have to drive through some pedestrian zones, hoping we don’t get stuck. But all is good, we get at the sanctuary and there even is an empty parking spot there.
It’s a big site which originally housed a temple of Hercules surrounded by a big sanctuary with huge porticos and cryptoporticos which are still there. The complex was later turned into an arms factory and later the first hydroelectric plant in Italy, making Tivoli the first electrified town. While we walk around the weather turns for the worse and we get back to our car in heavy rain. We get back to our home and have a relaxing afternoon.
