Tivoli - Part I - Hadrian's Villa

We took at ½ tour to the town of Tivoli,  just outside of Rome.  Full details of our time in Rome follow in my next post.  It is fairly humorous now, but at the time, not so much.  However, the tour consisted of two parts, and the first part was before the wheels fell off.

We visited Hadrian's Villa first.  The Emperor Hadrian built this villa outside of Rome, in Tivoli, on a huge expanse of property his wife owned.  He later chose this as his official residence because he did not enjoy his mansion on Palatine Hill in Rome.  Seeing the peace and quiet of this place, one understands why he loved it so much.  The ruins still remain and archaeologists have been able to determine what the original place looked like.  I don't really care for archaeology but I could envision this place and found it very, very interesting.

Model of Hadrian's Villa as it was believed to be in the 2nd century AD

Upon entering the site, we studied the model and our guide pointed out what we would be seeing so we could use our imaginations.

This is a panorama, so you can move from left to right across the  picture and see the entire pool by just panning it.

First we saw the large pool, which I think is the original. A little ways away is the slaves' quarters and the remains of what was the slaves' pool.  Hadrian was very good to his slaves.  He actually paid them!

The slaves' quarters 

Note the carving at the top of the column

A carved skylight in one of the bath rooms

The Bath House complex

The Romans, as we know, were really into communal baths.  Further on we saw the remains of the 3 baths used for this relaxing activity.  First there was the warm bath to clean the body, then the hot sauna-like thermal baths, using the natural thermal springs that flowed underneath the villa.  Finally came a plunge into the cold bath for invigoration of the body.  Sometimes they would even repeat the whole process.  It was a very social thing.






The last area we visited was what a pool and another house where Hadrian would go to mourn his lost love, and Egyptian boy named Antine.  He was the love of Hadrian's life.  He captured him when Antine was just a boy, enslaved him as was the custom, then fell madly in love with him.  Antine was very, very handsome and his likeness was carved into most of the statues at the Villa.  His reflecting pool was his memorial to his dead lover, who had drowned.