✅ As promised, on Saturday 18 June Marina De Franceschini (archaeologist) and Cristiana Ruggini (Director of the Sperlonga Museum) amazed the visitors of the Museum with the "special effects" of light created by Emperor Tiberius in the spectacular summer Triclinium inside the Grotto .
 
✅  In her conference at the Museum, Marina De Franceschini lectured about her discoveries of Archaeoastronomy in the grotto, showing the results of several years of study.
Then we moved inside the Grotto to discover its secret treasures, such as the mosaic on the walls of the cubicle decorated with shells and the revetment of fake stalactites that imitate natural ones in the Grotto.

✅ Only on the days of the Summer Solstice (from 18 to 25 June), standing in the niche at the end of Grotto B – where once the Polyphemus Group must have been –  the Sun can be seen setting in the center, behind the town of Sperlonga.

✅ For the occasion, we have arranged a large-scale reproduction of the statuary group of Ulysses blinding Polyphemus, to show how it was originally illuminated by the setting sun together with the guests in the triclinium, who were metaphorically "blinded" by the Sun itself.

✅ This illumination had a special symbolic meaning, linked to the rituals of the Roman calendar in the days of the Solstice. Actually, the Villa of Tiberius in Sperlonga is the oldest imperial villa with an astronomical orientation and luminous phenomena. Magic lluminations imitated by successive emperors such as Nero in the Domus Aurea and Hadrian in his Villa at Tivoli.

‼️ A Stonehenge from the Roman era!