HADRIAN'S VILLA – THE «INFERI» (UNDERWORLD): A MYSTERY IN THE WOODS
Why are they called «Inferi» or «Underworld»? It all starts from the Historia Augusta, where Publius Aelius Spartianus briefly describes Hadrian's Villa: «His Tiburtine villa was wonderfully built and he gave parts of it the most famous names of the provinces and places, calling them for example Liceo, Accademia, Prytaneo, Canopo, Pecile and Tempe. And to leave nothing out, he even made the underworld».
Since the Renaissance, all scholars of Hadrian's Villa have tried to trace those buildings, and the Underworld is no exception. Pirro Ligorio identified them in this Grotto thanks to the discovery of a statue of Hercules with the dog Cerberus, the mythical guardian of Hades.
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Francesco Contini and Giovan Battista Piranesi had a more rational approach, and understood that the Inferi Grotto was a Nymphaeum with a fountain, leaving aside the Underworld and the legends.
Reconstruction of the Inferi in the Gismondi Plastic model
The area has never been open to the public and is difficult to find even for those who know the Villa well: you have to make your way through a thick wood, but it is worth it.
The Valley of the Underworld is narrow and long, sunken into the tuff bank. It was probably a quarry, which Hadrian reused, transforming it into an evocative and mysterious Nymphaeum. At the bottom of the Valley there is a Grotto partly dug into the tuff, and partly built in masonry, which has a vertical opening in the center of the wall, from which a waterfall once flowed.
On the sides of the Grotto there are two doors that give access to two subterranean corridors dug into the tuff. They are lit by oculi, round openings in the vaults, and with a long circular path they emerge in the rocky walls of the Valley.
The other end of the curved corridor opening into the Valley of the Inferi
The cave and corridors are covered with a special cocciopesto that imitates natural rocks, and around the doors you can see tartari (fake stalactites) with traces of blue coolor. The Grotto with the fountain has never been excavated and must have had a long water basin in front of it, identified by recent surveys.
The Grotto of the Underworld with the waterfall is very similar to an ancient Nymphaeum with from the 4th century BC that can be seen in Syracuse above the Greek Theater. It is an artificial Grotto dug into the rock, where even today the water flows copiously from an ancient source. On the terrace above we know from Cicero that there was a temple of Demeter and Kore.
Perhaps even the Underworld with its subterranean corridors were dedicated to that mystery cult.