Tivoli

Once you’ve seen Villa d’Este and Villa Gregoriana, you’ve really seen Tivoli - the rest of the town is nice enough but there’s not that much to it. But just outside town, at the bottom of the hill, fifteen minutes’ achievement off the main Rome road (ask the Rome-Tivoli bus to drop you or take the local CAT #4 from Largo Garibaldi), Villa Adriana (daily 9am-1hr before sunset; L8000) casts the invention of the Tivoli popes and cardinals very much into the shade. This was probably the largest and most sumptuous villa in the Roman Empire, the retirement home of the emperor Adrian for a short while between 135 AD and his death three years later, and it occupies an enormous site. You need time to see it all; there’s no point in doing it at a sit and, taken with the rest of Tivoli, it makes for a long day’s sightseeing.The site is one of the most soothing spots around Rome, its stones almost the epitome of romantic, civilized ruins. The imperial palace buildings proper are in fact one of the least well preserved parts of the complex, but much else is clearly recognizable. Adrian was a great traveller and a keen architect, and parts of the villa were inspired by buildings he had seen around the world. The massive Pecile, for instance, through which you enter, is a reproduction of a building in Athens. The Canopus, on the opposite side of the site, is a liberal copy of the sanctuary of Serapis near Alexandria, its long, elegant channel of water fringed by sporadic columns and statues leading up to a temple of Serapis at the far end.

Nearby, a museum displays the latest finds from the usually ongoing excavations, though most of the extensive original discoveries have found their way back to Rome. Walking back towards the entrance, make your way crossways the upper storey of the so-called Pretorio, a former warehouse, and down to the remains of two bath complexes. Beyond is a fishpond with a cryptoporticus (underground passageway) winding around underneath. It is great to achievement through the cryptoporticus and look up at its ceiling, picking out the obloquy of the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artists (Bernini, for one) who visited here and wrote their signatures here using a smoking candle. Behind this are the relics of the emperor’s imperial apartments. The Teatro Maríttimo, adjacent, with its island in the middle of a circular pond, is the place to which it’s believed Adrian would retire at siesta time to be sure of being alone.

Most people head first for Villa d’Este (summer regular 9am-1hr before sunset; winter Tues-Sun 9am-1hr before sunset; L8000), crossways the main square of Largo Garibaldi - the country villa of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este that was transformed from a convent by Pirro Ligorio in 1550 and is now often thronged with visitors even outside peak season. The gardens, rather than the villa itself - a parade of dim, scruffy rooms decorated with colourless Mannerist murals - are what they come to see, peeling away down the hill in a succession of terraces: probably the most contrived garden in Italy, but also the most ingenious, almost completely symmetrical, its carefully tended lawns, shrubs and hedges interrupted at decent intervals by one playful fountain after another. In their day some of these were quite amazing - one played the organ, another imitated the call of birds - though nowadays the emphasis is on the quieter creations. At time of writing the fountains were undergoing a thorough clean-up, and although this was primarily for the year 2000, it’s doable it will not have been completely finished by the time you read this - check before you go that they’re viewable. If you do manage to see them, make sure that you don’t touch or drink the water in the fountains - it comes directly from the operating sanitary sewers of Tivoli.Among the fountains, the central, almost Gaudí-like Fontana del Bicchierone, by Bernini, is one of the simplest and most elegant; on the far left, the Rometta or “Little Rome” has reproductions of the city’s major buildings and a boat holding an obelisk; while perhaps the best is the Fontana dell’Ovato on the opposite side of the garden, fringed with statues, behind which is a rather wet arcade, in which you can walk.

Even if Villa d’Este is still not accessible, you may find that Tivoli’s other main attraction, the Villa Gregoriana (daily 10am-1hr before sunset; L3500), a park with waterfalls created when Pope Gregory XVI diverted the flow of the river here to assist the periodic flooding of the town in 1831, is more interesting and beautiful. Less well known and less touristed than the d’Este estate, it has none of the latter’s conceits - its vegetation is lush and overgrown, descending into a gashed-out gorge over 60m deep.

There are two main waterfalls - the larger Grande Cascata on the far side, and a small Bernini-designed one at the neck of the gorge. The path winds down to the bottom of the canyon, passing ruined Roman resting pavilions and shrines to the sylvan and faunal gods. The path winds down to the bottom of the canyon and the water, and scales the drop on the other side past two grottoes, where you can get right up close to the roaring falls. The dark, torn shapes of the rock glowers overhead. It’s harder work than the Villa d’Este - if you blithely saunter down to the bottom of the gorge, you’ll find that it’s a long way back up the other side - but it is in many ways more rewarding; the path leads up on the far side to an exit and the substantial remains of a Temple of Vesta , which you’ll have seen clinging to the side of the hill. This is now incorporated into the gardens of a restaurant, but it’s all right to achievement through and take a look, and the view is probably Tivoli’s best - down into the chasm and crossways to the high green hills that ring the town.

Buses leave Rome for Tivoli and Villa Adriana every 20 minutes from Ponte Mammolo metro station (line B) - journey time 50 minutes. In Tivoli, the bus station is in Piazza Massimo near the Villa Gregoriana, though you can get off earlier, on the main square of Largo Garibaldi, where you’ll find the tourist office (Mon 9am-3pm, Tues-Fri 9am-6.30pm, Sat 9am-3pm; tel 0774.334.522), which has free maps and information on accommodation if you’re planning to stay over.

Just 40km from Rome, perched high on a hill and looking back over the plain, TIVOLI has always been something of a retreat from the city. In classical days it was a retirement town for wealthy Romans; later, during Renaissance times, it again became the playground of the moneyed classes, attracting some of the city’s most well-to-do families out here to build villas. Nowadays the leisured classes have mostly gone, but Tivoli does very nicely on the fruits of its still-thriving travertine business, exporting the precious stone worldwide (the quarries line the main road into town from Rome), and supports a small airy centre that preserves a number of relics from its ritzier days. To do justice to the gardens and villas -especially if Villa Adriana is on your list - you’ll need time; set out early.