We drove about 25 miles east of Rome, up slightly into the Appenine foothills, to the ancient town of Tivoli, one of the summer playgrounds of "elite" Romans of the classical era. The Piazza del Cimiterio in Tivoli afforded us free if occasionally noisy parking for three nights while we explored the area's major sights--Tivoli itself, Hadrian's Villa, and the Renaissance Villa d'Este.
Elite Romans had been moving to the countryside since the first century BCE, building villas and plantations and such ("Rancho Deluxe") to get away from the hustle and bustle of the big cities. Hadrian would count as an elite Roman: emperor early in the second century, presiding over the empire's greatest extent, a traveler, a general, a scholar, a lover of all things Greek. We have bumped into him at his Wall in Britain, his birthplace at Italica, near Seville, at battle sites in Romania, at his tunnel (diverting a river) near Antioch, all over Greece, and at his Forum and Column and Pantheon in Rome. He was the third of the Five Good Emperors, and, next to Augustus, I'd say, best of them all. Anyhow, his villa, near Tivoli, is certainly the biggest of them all, a city in itself, with a palace, guest quarters, three Baths, both Latin and Greek libraries, huge warehouses and administrator/servant/soldier quarters, and some of the most striking water features of the ancient world. I'll just post some of the better pix, without comment.
