Gardens of Tivoli

Tivoli has two gardens worth visiting.  Two very different gardens.

One you have perhaps heard of.  

Here is Villa d'Este.  Built in 1550 for Cardinal Ippolito d'Este.  He was interestingly, the son of Lucrezia Borgia and was appointed archbishop of Milan at age 10.  The house is a huge luxurious thing, which naturally sits on top of an earlier Roman villa. But it is the gardens that people come to see.  They are a UNESCO world heritage site, and are pretty darn impressive.  Formal and whimsical gardens, grottoes, water features.  

With ancient sites you have to guess about such things, but in more modern places I think we can be forgiven for assuming a sense of humor is on display.  Here's a rather....maternal looking statue of the goddess Diana.

On a different fountain is this grumpy fellow.  Is he thinking "Why on earth does she turn up in public looking like that?"

Here's a short clip of one of the fountains in action.  There is also a fountain that plays music through a sort of "water organ".  I understand that this was the first such device ever constructed.

Now, here's the "garden" that is less well known.  When you walk from the train station to the center of town you go over a bridge. Notice the round temple we visited yesterday. Today we will be going into the ravine below.

This is a park called Villa Gregoriana.  What you see here looks like, and is, a deep canyon but was in ancient times an equally deep lake.  No less an authority than Pliny the Younger described a flood in 105 AD that eroded the area enough that the lake drained out through new outlets to the plain below.   

On the higher ground there are remains of a Roman villa.  This would be the service levels below the main villa.  It seems to have contained a fish pond and a vivarium where food animals were kept.

Re-using ancient stone work appears to be a well accepted practice in Tivoli.  Outside the villa was this nice picnic table and chairs.

Down and up again.  It was a marvelous zig zaggy tour of caves, waterfalls, bits of archaeology.  If you have perhaps enjoyed plenty of pasta on your Italian travels it is prudent to seek out a few calorie burning yet enjoyable activities.

Despite its small size Tivoli has more than a days worth of things to do.  I'll be summing up the "History in one Place" on Friday with practical tips on how to fit the pieces together.