Discover Hadrian's Villa

Hadrian's Villa is not a villa in any ordinary sense but a palace complex, built from around AD 120 by the emperor Hadrian on the plain below Tivoli, about 20 km from Rome. It covers at least a square kilometre -- more ground than the city of Pompeii -- and holds over thirty monumental buildings set on artificial terraces at different levels, among gardens, pools and fountains. Much of it has still never been excavated. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The buildings are considered among the masterpieces of Roman architecture, and what sets them apart is their geometry. Extensive use of concrete allowed curved and interpenetrating shapes that masonry alone could not produce, and the ground plans are symmetrical in ways that have been described as unmatched until the Baroque -- Borromini, in the seventeenth century, took inspiration directly from here.

It was built on top of somebody else's villas, and the oldest thing on the site is 200 years older than the emperor. Three earlier Republican villas stood on artificial terraces here, one or more possibly inherited through Hadrian's wife Vibia Sabina. One was absorbed into the Imperial Palace, one stood 250 m off on the terrace of the Doric Temple, and a third more than 200 m away across the Republican road that was later folded into the villa's transport network. The absorbed villa itself went up in three campaigns -- Sulla's time at the beginning of the first century B.C., then Caesar and Pompey's in the middle of it, then Augustus's at the end -- and the cryptoporticus that carried it still holds the mosaic vault of the mid-first century B.C.

The materials are travertine, brick, lime, pozzolana and tufa, and the concrete is what made the architecture possible. Extensive use of it is what let the builders work in curves -- the umbrella dome over the Piazza d'Oro vestibule, the cavernous octagonal exedra, the concave and convex rooms playing off each other -- and the complex symmetry of those ground plans was not matched again until Baroque Rome. Borromini drew on this site directly.

The site was chosen below the aqueducts, not on a hilltop. Roman villas were normally put on high ground, but this one needed water in quantity for its fountains, pools and gardens, and the supply came from the aqueducts already feeding Rome -- the Aqua Anio Vetus, Aqua Anio Novus, Aqua Marcia and Aqua Claudia. To draw from them the villa had to sit lower than they ran, which decided the ground before anything else did.

Most of it was built while the emperor was somewhere else. Work began at the end of 118 or the start of 119, a few months after Hadrian reached Rome, with most of the first brick stamps dated 117 because they had been made in advance. He is not documented on site until 125, after his first journey. The great expansion followed that visit -- most brick stamps date to 123 -- and building carried on through his second and third absences so that finished buildings would be waiting when he returned around 130. He began using it as his official residence around 128, which leaves at most six years of actual residence. Work was still going in the late 130s: the South Theatre's brick stamps are dated 137, and some of it may have been unfinished when he died.

Then it was taken apart over fourteen centuries. His successors used it occasionally and it stayed important enough to accumulate busts of Antoninus Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Verus, Septimius Severus and Caracalla. Diocletian restored it in the closing decades of the third century. By the fourth at the latest -- after Constantinople was founded in 330 -- decay and quarrying set in, and statues, high-quality marble and fittings went gradually. During the Gothic War of 535-554 both sides used the complex as a military camp. More material was removed as the Diocese of Tivoli expanded. In the sixteenth century Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, as Governor of Tivoli, took much of the remaining marble and statuary to furnish his own Villa d'Este in the town, which is why so much of one site is in the other.

The Piazza d'Oro was looted on purpose, repeatedly. Its modern name reflects how rich the architectural and sculptural fittings were, and that richness made it the target of organised treasure hunts from the sixteenth century on. Famous marble sculpture and architectural elements from this one building went into foreign museums and private collections.

It is still being found. Biondo Flavio documented the rediscovery in the late fifteenth century and brought it to Pope Pius II, whose writing on it started the architectural interest. The Antinoeion turned up in 1998. In February 2021 a team led by Rafael Hidalgo Prieto of the Pablo de Olavide University announced a water triclinium and a separate dining room that served as the model for the Serapeum. Much of the site has still never been dug, and significant areas on the edges are privately owned.

How big is it, really?

At least a square kilometre, which is more ground than the city of Pompeii covers, holding over thirty monumental buildings. Much of it is still unexcavated.

Is it the same ticket as the Villa d'Este?

No. Both are run by the same state institute, but they are separate sites with separate ticket offices -- Hadrian's Villa outside the town at Largo Marguerite Yourcenar 1, the Villa d'Este in the centre at Piazza Trento 5.

Why is everything named after somewhere else?

Because Hadrian named it that way. The only ancient written source for the villa, the Historia Augusta, records that he named rooms after significant places in the empire -- the Lyceum, the Academy, Hades -- and those are still the terms scholars use. Several buildings go further than the name and try to rebuild the thing: the Canopus is an Egyptian city and a reach of the Nile, the Poecile is the painted stoa in Athens.

Where did the statues go?

Out, over fourteen centuries. Removal began in the fourth century; the Piazza d'Oro was systematically plundered in treasure hunts from the sixteenth; and Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este took much of what was left to the Villa d'Este. Pieces found here are now in the Vatican Museum (Osiris-Antinous), the Louvre (the Diana of Versailles) and the Capitoline Museums (the Dove Basin mosaic, the Capitoline Antinous, the centaurs), among others.

Is the Antinoeion Antinous's tomb?

Unresolved. The concrete foundation found in 1998 marks where the Antinous Obelisk -- now on the Pincian Hill in Rome -- originally stood. Some scholars read the structure as his tomb; others as a heavily Egyptianising nymphaeum.

How long should I allow?

Longer than a villa suggests. The main buildings are spread across the whole square kilometre rather than clustered, and the route runs over paths and gradients between terraces.