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Tivoli |
Aelius Hadrian was the second Spaniard, after Trajan, to be Emperor of Rome. He was an inteligent administrator, restless traveller, a man without prejudices and ful of imagination, an architect, a versatile genius and lover and protector of the arts. He was a mixture of the shrewdness, nomadism and sensuality of his contry, and a real son of his times, the instability, tension and restlessness of which his personality reflected perfektly. He lesft us a clear, vivid, and indestructible picture of his soul in his famous Villa. Hadrian’s Villa is the creation of a man who strove after new things and old memories at the same time, a man imbued with egoism and curiosity. It is the fruit his experiences, nostalgia, desires and quest for the imposibile. Some historias positively assert that hadrian himself prepared the plans for his Villa and for the individual buildings which it contains, and even supervised the execution of the works. Without subscribing to such an emphatic assertion, we must, however, acknowledge the fact that the stamp of the Emperor is visible in many buildings and that his will is omnipresents in the Villa. To experience new delights or to relive the ones he had already enjoyed, Hadrian collected in his Villa all the most beatiful and the strangest things that he had seen in the course of his countless travels. We find here sumptuons Egyptian architecture, sublime Greek works of art, sun drenched colourful Spanish buildings, heating invented by the Nordic peoples assailed by the cold, licentious comforts of the Aegean Islands, and the latest Oriental effeminacy. Thus, the art, luxury, refinement, and variety of every country in the world sprang up amidst the solemn and peaceful Roman plain conjuerd up by the magic of the Emperor’s multiform will. The building of the Villa was initiated in 118 A.D. and continued uninterruptedly for twenty years until the death of the Emperor in 138 A.D.
Bed and
Breakfast Libea
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