PRESENTATION AND PURPOSE OF THIS GROUP
On this page I will write posts dedicated to the various buildings of Villa Adriana, which are about forty, to tell their story and illustrate them with new photographs, reconstruct their function and meaning.
My never ending story with Villa Adriana in Tivoli started many years ago, when I was studying in the United States at Bryn Mawr College for a Master of Arts. I asked to do a thesis on ancient Roman mosaics. They proposed the mosaics of Villa Adriana to me and I wrote the thesis without ever having visited it, studying it only in books.
When I went back to Italy, I visited the Villa for the very first time, discovering a world that did not exist in books.
So I rewrote the Master thesis and wrote my first book on the Villa entitled «Villa Adriana. Mosaici pavimenti, edifici», which won the Erma di Bretschneider Prize and was published in 1991.
To my great pleasure it is still a fundamental reference text because it reconstructs the history of the individual buildings and excavations and lists the rooms one by one.
Then I wrote other books, which are found in the website of the publishing house Rirella Editrice – www.rirella-editrice.com – some of which deal with Archaeoastronomy, others with Roman Villas in general.
Since then, many things have changed (for the better) thanks to information technology. Together with the architect Umberto Pavanello I was the first to use the Laser Scanner at Villa Adriana for survey: it allows to quickly draw plans and elevations of buildings in an extremely precise way.
However, modern technology still requires a thinking human head – that is, archaeologists like me – able to understand and make use of the enormous amount of data thus collected.
A multidisciplinary approach is essential: archaeologists, architects, archaeologists, topographers, speleologists, geologists, astronomers, art historians have cooperated and worked with me.
Each with his or her own point of view, in order to arrive at a picture of the situation that is as detailed and complete as possible.
Computer science has also had a great positive impact on the plans and ancient texts that can be found online today, while in the «analogical» a special permission was required to photograph them or transcribe them by hand as the copyists of the Middle Ages did.
Hadrian's Villa has been known and studied since the end of the 15th century, but – it seems impossible – there is still so much to study, explore and discover. It is a site of extraordinary beauty and complexity, where many of the greatest artists, architects and antique dealers of the Renaissance came to study and draw inspiration: Francesco di Giorgio Martini, Andrea Palladio, Pirro Ligorio, Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo, Antonio and Giuliano da Sangallo, Baldassarre Peruzzi and others.
The excavations that have continued for more than five centuries were treasure hunting, mainly focused on finding works of art, sculptures, mosaics, precious marbles. Therefore, a lot of important information has been lost forever because little is known about the stratigraphy and the phases of abandonment of the Villa.
Just think of the sculptures: about four hundred are known, but often the exact point of discovery is unknown. Many have been lost, others are scattered in Museums and private Collections around the world. Even in this case there is a huge research still to be done.
In recent years, the University La Sapienza of Rome, with Paolo Carafa and Fabio Cavallero, has completed a magnificent survey project with Laser Scanner that will soon give us the first real complete and updated plan of the Villa and will allow us to reconstruct its extraordinary buildings in 3D.
I have been lucky enough to survey and study some buildings that are still in private property and have never been opened to the public: the Accademia, the Mimizia and the Odeon, which are in the upper part of the Villa. So I can publish photographs of magnificent places that are unknown to most people, such as the Temple of Apollo, which no one has ever visited.
The same goes for the areas of the Villa in state property that have never been included in the visit itineraries, such as the Palestra, the Praetorium, the Nymphaeum Above the Canopus, the Underworld and the Temple of Pluto.
Another extraordinary and unknown world of the Villa is that of the underground service routes, a real subway 'ante litteram'. These are the enormous tunnels of the Great Trapezium, intended for the traffic of carts that brought supplies to the Villa, and other tunnels serving the heating systems of the thermal buildings.
Let's start an extraordinary journey in one of the most beautiful, complex and fascinating archaeological sites in the world. If you have any particular curiosity or question, do not hesitate to ask: this page was created to share what I have learned in many years of study and work.