Hadrians villa at Tivoli

Not all people wanna stay in Rome, not even all emperors wants to live there. who knows why.

An example of such a emperor is emperor Hadrian, born in 76 ad in Spain, son of the brother of Trajan. But after his parents died, he was put in care of the the emperor Trajan and ended up as the successor and ruled in the period 117-138 ad. Trajan did actually never name Hadrian as is official successor, but his wife claim him

The reason I have chosen to bore you guys about this guy, is that we went to visit the place where he actually wanted to live, namely villa Adriana (Italian for Hadrian).

This ruin which was luckily forgotten for the after time, but sadly discovered by a cardinal Ippolito II d'Este in 1550 how removed all the marble and statues from the Hadrian's villa to decorate his own villa (villa d'Este) which is also around the villages of Tivoli. The state of Hadrian's villa at that point is unknown (at least by me), but today there is a lot of ruins but only a few places where you can get an hint of how magnific this place must have been. One of these places is were the picture below is taken. We were luckily (Even in Rome the weather is bad some times) with the weather. So we had a great Italian picnic, with mozzarella cheese, prosciutto and red wine. And then a tour around the place with our rented audio guides (which is these phone looking things, where you press a number and it will tell you about the place you are standing)
. We also saw a nice view of danish efficiency, in the form of a guy, who must have a record (if any exists) in the unknown Hadrian villa race, we felt a little bit like we were watching an episode of road runner cartoon, with this slim guy appearing in front of us, taking a picture and then bip-bip running on to the next view post.


We didn't actually talk with the poor efficient guy, but the politikkens Rom guidebook gave him away.

In any case it was a great day, and the villa is definitely a mustsee if you have more than a few days in Rome.