Tivoli - Villa d'Este

Friday night we checked into the O.C. Hotel Villa Adriana in Tivoli, a town about 30 kilometers to the east of Rome. Historically, Tivoli served as a resort town for the Roman aristocracy with many Roman Villas dotting the area. It's importance actually goes back much further into the distant past. As you approach Tivoli, you start to climb into the mountains and with the the area having an abundance of water and rich soils, you had waterfalls and gardens both natural as well as man made. Long after the Romans had gone, the area still served as a retreat and resort.

It was both Saturday as well as a long May day weekend (which we enjoyed later in the day with a 2 hour traffic jam going south) and with Tivoli a favorite get away from Rome we knew the crowds would be coming. Though there are other things to see we limited our visit to the Villa d'Este and Villa Adriana starting early to avoid the eventual crowd. In this blog we'll share pictures of the 16th century Villa d'Este a World Heritage Site. It was the palace and gardens of Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este who was the son of Lucrezia Borgia for those who might have watched Showtime's well done the Borgias with Jeremy Irons as Pope Alexander VI.

Historically he is known as the guy who took much of the marble and statutes, etc from the lavish Roman Emperor Hadrian's Villa to build his own villa. Hadrian's Villa (Villa Adriana) is where we went next, though all you see now is the brick and stone which was underneath the marble.