Week 10 - Tivoli

 Buongiorno Friends and Family,

        Now that we are back from spring break it is time to get back to class work. Our professors keep reminding us that our time here in Italy is starting to draw to a close and the last couple weeks will start to fly by. We are working on getting our projects ready for our mid-crit but I will speak on that a bit more in my next post. At this point in the semester, everything that we have been seeing and learning about is starting to spill out of my head because there is so much knowledge to be learned about these historic places and their significance. I am just hoping that because I am writing down some of my most memorable parts I will have a good record to come back to someday and share my stories again. 

        This week we had a short day trip to two different villas in Tivoli. For those who may not know what a villa is, I'll include this short description. Villas were historically the weekend houses for the ancient Romans. These were often in the country away from the main city they lived in and allowed them to enjoy the countryside. However, this idea didn't just stay with the Romans and was also embraced during the Renaissance when people were inspired by the art and knowledge of the ancient Romans. 

        The first we visited was Villa d'Este. This Villa was built in the 16th century in the Renaissance style. It was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este. In the 16th century, those who worked high up in the catholic church had lots of money to spend on weekend houses. The location of this villa was chosen because of its close proximity to Rome as well as the large access to water. Two of the same reasons why Hadian built his villa in this region (which I will talk more about in a bit). This villa has an amazing collection of fountains across the entire garden and it was impressive to see how well some of the fountains worked after all this time although there have been several that are no longer operating. If you are interested in seeing more pictures of this Villa I have included a link down below. 

https://villae.cultura.gov.it/i-luoghi/villa-deste/

This was a fresco inside the Palace that showed the thought behind his villa. However, I didn't feel like the gardens were quite this steep. His thought was however that the city below would look up at the hill to see his villa and his place would be sitting right at the top.

This fountain was originally a musical fountain and had an organ built behind the fountain features. Whenever he had guests come by they would be amazed that the fountain itself was singing. Unfortunately, it was too early in the season to be running for us.

This villa was passed down through family members for several years but was eventually sold to other wealthy families until it finally came under Italy's possession in 1914.

Next on our trip, we went to Hadian's Villa. Hadian's Villa is a huge archaeological site from the Roman Empire. The Roman Emperor Hadrian had this villa built around 120 AD and it is the largest villa complex from that era. The biggest takeaway that I had from this site was understanding that this Emperor basically built an all-inclusive resort for himself and his closest friends. This villa had large reflection pools, huge courtyards, libraries, temples, and thermal baths for relaxing and getting away from the chaos of Rome. To understand how big this villa was for its time, there were also several thousand servants who lived there to care for the property and to serve Hadian and his guests. There was even a large thermal bath for the servants that was even larger than the thermal bath for Hadian and his family.

Before we entered the park we took a look at a huge site plan of the villa. However when we walked around we only covered about a fifth of the total site.

This is the Maritime Theater. This was Hadian's personal study where he could have deep thoughts. He wanted to completely seclude himself so he wouldn't be distracted so they built a moat around the study so he had his own little island.

This area was known as Canopus and it was supposed to act like a recreation of the Nile river. Along the reflection pool, there was an arcade of columns and areas where sculptures would have been placed. However today the original statues and columns no longer exist. Instead, they are replaced with concrete reconstructions. The originals were probably stolen and used for other projects around Italy. Until about 1980 this area wasn't protected and random visitors could take historical artifacts as souvenirs. 

This was probably the most beautiful sculpture I saw here. Very realistic!

The week ended with a workshop at a local brewery where we learned about micro-brewing. I really enjoyed understanding what steps help create different flavors and how hands-on the process is day to day. The brewery we went to was called F3BO and it is the smallest microbrewery in Italy.

Wine is always paired with food and similarly they also paired each of the beers we tried with little appetizers. The most interesting beer I tried was a beer crafted to reassemble a light rose wine and they paired it with a scone. 

Finally, that evening we attended a concert at the local theater where we got to hear a Beatles tribute band. They went through all the Beatles' eras and finally ended the night with "Hey Jude"