Villa Adriana comprises a villa designed by Emperor Hadrian (117-138 AD) and 120 acres of land. There are many replicas of the emperor’s favourite buildings originating from Greece and Egypt. But for what purpose was it once built? What did Hadrian’s villa look like in its original outfit? These and many other questions will be answered in the next interview by archaeologist Marina De Franceschini.
1 – For what purpose was the Villa Adriana originally built under the Emperor Hadrian?
Villa Adriana was a large representative villa, and was built to amaze and to show the power and wealth of the Emperor. The luxury and grandeur of the buildings are a manifestation of his power.
More than a villa it was an estate, but it is outside and above the traditional classifications. Often it is compared to Versailles or to Buckingham Palace, but the comparison is an understatement, because it is much larger and more complex, having about forty different buildings.
The model were the great palaces of the Hellenistic dynasties (we know very little about them), which struck the Romans for their luxury and their grandeur when they conquered and discovered the East and the Greek world.
The Roman aristocrats imitated the luxury of those palaces in their homes at Rome, and then the “fashion” of building a luxury villa for vacation in the countryside was born. The first emperor, Augustus (1st century BC) built a villa in Prima Porta, in the suburbs of Rome. For their villas the roman aristocrats and emperors chose places that still today are holiday resorts, such as the Roman Countryside with Tivoli, Praeneste or Subiaco, or in seaside locations like the islands of Capri, Ischia and Ventotene etc..
The villas were vacation homes for the otium, dedicated to art, beauty and philosophical meditation. Luxury was the very symbol of power (and it still is today): only the Emperor could afford to build a gigantic architectural complex like Villa Adriana, about 120 hectares, more or less the size of Pompeii.
Villa Adriana is the largest and most complex villa of Roman antiquity, with several buildings where the emperor experimented new architectural forms, with curvilinear rooms, ‘umbrella’ vaults, surprising perspective views, thermal plants, and a huge amount of fountains and nymphaea.
The abundance of water was another manifestation of luxury and therefore of power, as well as the refined and expensive decoration, with precious marbles imported from all over the known world, which were used for opus sectile floors and wall revetments. And then there were statues, mosaics, stuccoes, porticoes and columns with capitals of new and different shapes.
2 – What material did the Romans use in the buildings of the villa and how were the arches of the walls maintained?
The basic materials are tuff, bricks and mortar made with pozzolana, all of local provenance. The tuff was extracted in the area of the Villa, which was built above a huge tuff bank: digging it to build the underground road network (see Inferi, question n. 5) that tuff was used to make ‘cubilia‘ (shaped as a small pyramid) or tuff bricks. The bricks were produced by Roman figlines, with a prevalence of brick stamps of year 123 AD which are a terminus post quem for most of the Villa’s buildings. Also the pozzolana (an indestructible and impermeable volcanic cement) comes from underground quarries located in the area of the Villa.
The walls of Villa Adriana are built mainly with the opus mixtum technique, which uses tuff and brickwork. The walls had two masonry vestments on the outside, in the middle of which is inserted a thick layer of cement mortar, an inner core made with fragments of tuff and bricks, river sand, lime and pozzolana, which holds in place cubilia and bricks. (Vitruvius described it very well).
The composition and structure of the walls of Villa Adriana. © 2019 Marina De Franceschini
The vestments of the walls (outside layer) are made with tuff “cubilia” inserted obliquely in the cement mortar; at regular intervals there are brick courses and in the corners or in correspondence with the doors and windows there are the so-called “ammorsature”, which serve to reinforce the edges. The arches above the doors and windows are made with plateaus made of flat and large bricks and often above them there are other ‘relieving’ arches. The large retaining walls that surround the various terraces of the Villa are mainly built with tuff bricks.
The roofs were barrel or cross vaults, or domes, all made with the opus caementicium, the same used for the inner core of walls. There also were flat ceilings, for example in the porticoes, which were supported by wooden beams.
Besides rough building materials there were precious marbles used for floors, walls, basins and thresholds, for columns, capitals and architraves: they came from all over the known world and, as mentioned, were a demonstration of the imperial power: only the emperor could afford to make such expensive marble come from all over the world.
2a – Has the same technology been used for example in the construction of the Colosseum?
The Colosseum was an amphitheater with different building requirements: there we find the vaulted ceilings in opus caementicium and the walls are made almost completely with bricks. The Colosseum is from the Vespasian era (from 69 AD on), when architecture was more linear. Hadrian and his architects created a new language and architectural design with a prevalence of curved lines, so construction techniques had to adapt to the new forms. The curved walls are all built with cubilia.
About building techniques, see Lynn Lancaster’s beautiful book Concrete vaulted construction in imperial Rome. Innovations in context. Cambridge 2005 which has some beautiful drawings. And also: ADAM J.P. The art of building among the Romans. Materials and techniques. Milan 1998 (also in English).
3 – How and what techniques were used in the renovation and repair of buildings?
There are some ancient repairs such as the closing of some doors, made with recycled materials. During the Middle Ages there were great destructions because the Villa was used as a quarry of building material ‘ready to use’ and at that time the bricks were systematically removed to reuse them elsewhere. Marbles were often burned to make lime. As for the restorations, in the nineteenth century they made large masonry buttresses to shore up the unsafe structures, which were then eliminated.
Modern restorations try to use the same ancient materials, and they mainly use pozzolana and cocciopesto to waterproof the vaults and to cover the top of collapsed walls. In the 1970s, parts of some buildings were rebuilt, such as the porticoes of the Maritime Theater or the Building with Doric Pillars, and the columns were raised.
The Bath of Heliocaminus. Restorations are outlined in yellow. © 2019 Marina De Franceschini
Canopus. Restorations are marked with blue asterisk. © 2019 Marina De Franceschini
In recent years there have also been some rather questionable interventions such as the renovation of white marble floors in the building with Three Exedras.
© 2019 Marina De Franceschini
The basic problem with restorations is that they must be reversible and above all distinguishable from ancient walls, also because in a few years the weathering makes everything seem “old”.
A model to follow are the restorations of the Pecile vestments made in the 1960s: new cubilia were put in place but less prominent, so you can immediately understand what is ancient and what has been redone (see the figure below).
© 2019 Marina De Franceschini
4 – How much money does the Italian government spend on restorations each year?
There is no fixed and established amount, there is no rational or systematic restoration plan. In practice they do the restoration work when they manage to get the money to do it.
Recently they have done large restorations at the Maritime Theater, which lasted three years, and now they are restoring the Small Baths. But the work of restoration and maintenance is endless, a never ending story. In many years of study I have seen restorations being made and then restored, while the original Roman walls are still there, almost untouched. The amount of money they spend is always very large, and unfortunately not always well spent.
5 – A network of tunnels has been found for the maintenance transport of the villa in the area. Historia augusta mentions that the emperor would have built a real underworld (Hades) according to Greek models. Does this place really exist, are there photos and is it open to the public?
One of the least known and most extraordinary features of Hadrian’s Villa is the network of underground tunnels dug into the tuff, which were suitable for carts (the so-called Great Trapezium, with galleries about 5 meters high and wide) or pedestrian (the narrower secondary galleries, which branched off from the Great Trapezium). These underground tunnels connected all the buildings of the Villa between them. In practice it was a parallel route intended only for service personnel, comparable to what is seen today on cruise ships, where next to the rooms and cabins for tourists there are doors from which one enters the corridors for staff.
© 2019 Marina De Franceschini
In this way the traffic of the carts carrying the supplies for the villa was hidden from view and hearing. They brought wood to heat the furnaces of the baths and heating systems, but also food, building materials, etc. The underground paths of the thermal buildings with their furnaces were also connected to that underground network. Thus the servants were available in any building.
This logistic system is still being studied by today’s architects.
For the underground paths, see De Franceschini M. – Marras A.M., “Villa Adriana The underground paths of the Academy’s esplanade: studies and exploration,” Archeologia Sotterranea (Underground Archeology), 14 April 2012
The description of the Historia Augusta has prompted all scholars to try to identify the buildings of ancient Greece that it mentioned. The Inferi (etiam Inferos finxit, the Historia Augusta said) naturally boosted their imagination and were identified with the subterranean road network of the Great Trapezium.
© 2019 Marina De Franceschini
But currently it is thought that they can be identified with the cd. Grotto of the Inferi (see my article) which has never been opened to the public.
It is a long and narrow valley carved into the tufa bank, probably decorated by a long water basin similar to that of Canopus.
At the end of the valley there is a partly artificial cave, at the center of which is a fountain with a jet of water. In the cave two doors opened that introduced the two semicircular corridors dug into the tuff and covered with a special cocciopesto which simulated the rocks of a cave. The corridors had two other doors on the other end, which opened in the rock along the sides of the valley. It is probable that ritual ceremonies related to the cult of Demeter and Kore and therefore to the cycle of the Seasons took place here.
For the inferi, see the article Ref. 9246: De Franceschini M. Tivoli – The Hells of Villa Adriana (etiam inferos finxit). in Archeologia Sotterranea (Underground Archeology) n. October 14th 2017, pp. 19-35 (9246)
Thank you for the interview!
Further reading:
Gizzi S. “Les dix dernières années de restaurations à la villa Adriana” in Hadrien. Trésors d’une Imperial Villa 1999 p. 123-140
Gizzi S. “For a rereading of the history of the restoration of Villa Adriana from 1841 to 1990” in Bolletino d’Arte 1999 84 p. 1-76
Gizzi S. “The last ten years of restoration at Villa Adriana” in Adriano Architettura and project 2000 p. 157-173
P.S. For more about the history of Villa Adriana and the archaeological excavations in the area, see the website http://www.villa-adriana.net/
