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.