Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli: A Virtual Tour

Art History

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome
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Republican Period: Temple of Portunus
Republican Period: Veristic Male Portrait
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Augustus of Primaporta
Painted Garden, Villa of Livia
Head of Augustus
Ara Pacis
Dionysiac frieze, Villa of Mysteries, Pompeii
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Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli: A Virtual Tour
Maritime Theatre at Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli
Pair of Centaurs Fighting Cats of Prey from Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli
Column of Trajan
Medea Sarcophagus
Equestrian Sculpture of Marcus Aurelius
Ludovisi Battle Sarcophagus
Arch of Constantine
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Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli: A Virtual Tour A virtual tour of Hadrian's Villa using a 3D digital model of the villa created under the direction of Dr. Bernard Frischer. The ruins of Hadrian's Villa, in the town of Tivoli, near Rome, is spread over an area of approximately 250 acres. Many of the structures were designed by the Emperor Hadrian who ruled from 117 until his death in 138 C.E. This virual rendering is based on current archeological research and has been created in consultation with art historians, archaeologists, and museum curators with expertise in this area. Please note, a few features are necessarily assumptions based on the best available evidence. Speakers: Dr. Bernard Frischer and Dr. Beth Harris

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Hadrian's Villa, Tivoli: A Virtual Tour

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Here we are in a virtual world that recreates
Hadrian's villa the way that it looked in the second century
AD, created by Dr. Bernie Frischer and, Bernie,
you're here in the virtual world with us.
Yes, I'm really Hadrianus.
You're seeing me right now,
so this is really my place.
I built it between 117
and when I died in 138
and now I've come back to Earth
and to life to show you around.
And I noticed you have a beard,
and I don't think most emperors
did before you?
One ancient biographer said it was
because I had acne and I was
trying to hide it,
but that is not true!
The real reason is, I loved
Athens and the Athenian philosophical schools,
and all philosophers wore beards.
And here we are in your villa,
which is located outside of Rome.
So how long did you work on this?
Really, from the moment I became Emperor in 117.
I started thinking, Wouldn't it be good
to have a government retreat
outside of Rome, but near Rome?
And one reason that I thought that was that
because, unfortunately, in my
early days as Emperor in 117, I had to
put three senators to death,
so that always made me a
little bit sheepish about being in Rome.
How big is this villa?
Well you would say about
two hundred, two hundred-fifty
acres. And there are thirty
major building complexes. I was
an amateur architect, and I just
kept building and building. I was a bit of a maniac
when it came to building.
My predecessor and relative's chief
architect, Apollodorus of Damascus
said some very unkind things
about a building I designed
in Rome, so I forced him
to commit suicide, but that
just shows how much I loved architecture.
There are libraries here, there are temples,
there are living quarters, there are baths.
There are sculpture gardens, ponds, and fountains.
There are dining halls,
indoor winter dining halls
and outdoor summer dining halls,
so you really can have a good
time here all year round.
And it's kind of a city in miniature - Rome in miniature.
This was fabulously decorated.
None of that lower-class painted fresco
for me. We used only cut marble on the walls
and on the floors, and we brought in marbles
from all over the empire to use here.
Even, you know, we're now looking at this
obelisk right in front of me,
granite from Egypt. This is
somehow expressive of the
power of Rome and all of its
wealth and resources.
Could you take us on a tour of some
of the highlights of your villa?
I would be happy to do that.
So just follow me, and we'll
go out to a road that's in front.
We can see that the end
of the road is a big structure
called the vestibule, by you moderns.
That was the receiving area
for all important guests coming
from Rome. And you know, when you
arrive, you tend to be a
bit grimy and tired, so
right next to the vestibule, we
put a beautiful bath building. And then,
when you finish bathing, you
could have a meal. And then
if I did receive you, it
would have been in
one of the many audience halls
in the villa. This is a hall
that could actually have held hundreds of people,
and the villa in its heyday,
for example, when the Senate visited me
out here, could have
had hundreds of guests. This
is the very first reception hall.
I noticed these lovely views
when I look through the
doorways and the windows.
I'm very interested in views
and I'm very interested in
direting the gaze of the viewer
to what I want him or her to see.
Right now, we're looking straight
ahead at a very famous part
of the villa, which I think
occurs in many textbooks of your
young students. It's called the
Canopus, and I put one of
my most creative pieces of
architecture there. It's actually
a curved colonnade and the
part of the colonnade above
the columns we call the
architrave. It's actually arched.
underneath the arches I put some of
my favorite statues. I wanted to make sure that
even at the moment of arrival, my important
visitors would be able to see and admire my design.
And your sculture that decorated the villa
this is all inspired by ancient Greek sculpture but also
some ancient Egyptian sculpture.
I had copies made of my favorite types of Egyptian and
Greek and even Roman sculpture. But I also
commissioned some new pieces. I had two highly talented
sculptors who worked for me, I brought from Aphrodisias
in the middle of modern-day Turkey, Papus and Aristeas,
and they made some beautiful pieces I am told are
still well-preserved today and can be seen in the
Capitoline Museum.
Could you take us to see the so-called Canopus?
I'd be happy to. We're down in the Canopus
at the end looking toward one of my very
favorite parts of the villa, the so-called
Serapeum, temple of Serapis. This is not a
temple at all, really, but an outdoor
dining area, where we love to eat in the summer.
So I mentioned that after you arrived in the
vestibule and bathe, you might be invited
to an audience with me, but you also might
be invited directly to dine with me. You
can see how I cleverly designed this place
to be very refreshing, because it's filled
with cascades of water from my own
private aqueduct. The semi-circular structure right
in front of us is a so-called stibadium. It's
a big couch, and we could have twenty
or thirty diners banqueting with us on that couch.
Of course, we would put down our
cushions. Right now, you're looking at a
colonnade with Corinthian capitals. One
thing you don't see is something
I loved and that I revived in other parts of the
villa: the Doric order. Not so frequently used in
Roman imperial architecture, where everything
before me tended to be Corinthian. But
I loved the Doric order as well. Again,
it reminds me of Athens and Greece.
I also heard you were a religious man.
I am. There's no one more religious than me.
After all, I am a future God and therefore have
to maintain respect for the Gods. I built
temples all over the place, including right
here at the villa.
Should we go visit one?
So we've just teleported from the Sarapeum to the
so-called Roccabruna, that's just
a modern-name. On top is a temple, in the Doric
order, but even more interesting is
the sanctuary of the goddess Isis that
I put in a rotunda below.
If you look around, the sanctuary, ah,
there we can see the priest. We have
a rotunda that's actually two-thirds the
size of the Pantheon.
The candelabra we see in front of us
are decorated with bases that have
images pertaining to the cult of Isis.
We can see in front of us the
statue of Isis, which is now in a museum of
Rome. Isis was the queen of heaven.
As such, she rules over not only the earth
but the sky. And her festival in Rome was
on the summer solstice. We turn our clock back to the
summer solstice at sunset and now we look
at the statue, we can see how I have aligned
the statue in the niche exactly so that at
sunset it would be all lit up on the summer solstice
That's fabulous! And there's a
frescoed ceiling on the dome.
There is! The ceiling had a dome of
heaven motif that I put in with the Sun God on his
chariot at the peak of the dome and the zodiac at the lower
register of the dome. And, look what we
find right over Isis. We find the twins, Gemini.
I put them there because the last day of
Gemini is the summer solstice, so this is all
oriented very much towards the summer
solstice and sunset on the summer solstice,
because that is a day very important to Isis.
I'm honored that you gave us this tour.
Thank you!
You're welcome.

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