Tivoli Villas
Two UNESCO World Heritage Sites: Villa Adriana (1999) And Villa D'Este (2001); Both Run By The Istituto Autonomo Villa Adriana E Villa D'Este · Tivoli, Lazio
Two of the most extravagant private houses ever built in Italy sit six kilometres apart in the same hill town east of Rome, seventeen centuries between them, and both are World Heritage sites. Hadrian's Villa is what an emperor builds when he has seen the whole empire and wants to keep pieces of it: a hundred and twenty hectares of pools, baths, libraries and a circular island villa with its own moat, larger in extent than Pompeii and still mostly unexcavated. Villa d'Este is what a cardinal builds when he has been passed over for the papacy: a terraced garden of fifty-one fountains, nearly four hundred spouts and sixty-four waterfalls, fed by a tunnel from the river and driven entirely by gravity, with not one pump anywhere in the system. An organ in one of the fountains is played by water pressure alone, and it still performs every couple of hours. Both villas are open to anyone who turns up, though one of them famously refuses to open before two in the afternoon on a Monday.
Piazza Trento 5, Tivoli, Lazio, 00019, Italy
Villa d'Este from 08:30 with closing between about 16:00 in midwinter and 18:45 in high summer, the exit an hour later; it OPENS AT 14:00 ON MONDAYS, except public-holiday Mondays when it opens 08:45 and the following Tuesday opens at 14:00 instead; closed 1 January and 25 December. The Organ Fountain plays from 10:30 and every two hours after. Villa Adriana from 08:30 with closing between about 15:30 in midwinter and 18:00 in high summer, the exit up to 19:30; open every day except 1 January and 25 December. Both free on the first Sunday of the month.