Villa Gregoriana site features

Villa Gregoriana is a park in the steep valley between the right bank of the Aniene and the ancient Roman acropolis of Tivoli -- mostly thick woodland, with paths threading down through it. The scale is vertical rather than horizontal: you enter at the top from Largo Sant'Angelo, descend into the gorge, and come out again at the Temple of Vesta on the acropolis, which means the visit is a one-way circuit with a climb at the end.

The gorge

Since ancient times the river has curved wide around the acropolis and then dropped off a limestone spur onto the plain. It originally made four falls; there are now two. The Great Waterfall drops more than 100 metres and is the second highest in Italy after the Marmore, though it carries less water than it did.

The paths that run through the woods, clearings and steep descents of the Valle dell'Inferno look like wilderness and are a composition -- the landscape is shaped to the canons of the Romantic garden. The Grotto of Neptune and the Grotto of the Sirens were cut by water into the limestone; passages like the Traforetto were cut by people.

The temples

Above it all, on the acropolis, stand the two temples of Tibur. The rectangular one dates from around 150 BC and may have been dedicated to Hercules or to Tiburnus. The round one, from around 100 BC, is perhaps connected with the cult of the Sibyl; Palladio and Serlio both studied it, and it became the emblem of the city. It is also where the visit ends: the exit and the bookshop are at the Temple of Vesta.

The Great Waterfall

The centrepiece of Villa Gregoriana: the Aniene dropping more than 100 metres, second in height in Italy only to the Marmore. It is not a natural fall in its present position -- it was moved here by the tunnelling of the 1830s -- and it has been reduced by the damming of the river at the tunnel mouths since 1886.

The Cunicoli Gregoriani

Two artificial tunnels bored under Monte Catillo on the orders of Gregory XVI after the flood of 1826, to carry the Aniene away from the town and move the point where it falls. They are the reason the park exists and the reason it bears his name.

The round temple of Tibur

Around 100 B.C., on the acropolis above the gorge, possibly connected with the cult of the Sibyl. Palladio and Serlio both studied it, and it became the icon of Tivoli -- which is why versions of it stand in gardens across Europe.

The rectangular temple

Around 150 B.C., beside the round one, perhaps dedicated to Hercules or to Tiburnus.

The Grottoes of Neptune and the Sirens

Cut by the water itself into the limestone, and reached by the steep paths down into the Valle dell'Inferno. They are the part of the park that is genuinely the river's work rather than the pope's.

The Traforetto

A passage cut straight through the rock, and the clearest correction available to a first impression: it reads as part of the gorge and is a piece of engineering, like most of what appears wild here.

The villa of Manlius Vopiscus

A Republican villa in the valley, celebrated by Statius in the Silvae and devastated by the flood of 106. Uninhabited since the beginning of the second century, its overgrown ruins were carefully tidied in the 1830s and integrated into the new garden -- ruins restored in order to look like ruins.