For the past two Wednesday field trips, we traveled to villas and gardens in and around Tivoli. The first Wednesday, we hopped on a bus at 7:30 and set out on the three hour drive to Hadrian's Villa. When we got there, we were either a half hour early or our teachers scheduled wrong but we waited around for 45 minutes next to port-a-potties. They were very scenic. Eventually we met up with our tour guide and she took us into a little room that had an architectural model of the entire villa, which was HUGE!!! My classmates said that their architecture history teacher (mine was different since I started a year earlier than them) told them that Hadrian created this villa for his male lover. Pretty sweet present if you ask me. She took us in through the main gate and wall that surrounded the villa. Everything now is unfinished brick but apparently back in the day all the walls of the buildings were covered in marble. In the estate, there are three main attractions. The first is the small house which has a little moat surrounding it. It's not full of fish, but Hadrian originally used it to swim laps around the house. I think I now officially want a baby moat around my house... Maybe a drawbridge too. The second attraction was the bath complex...which was enormous! We couldn't get very close because they are currently doing some reconstruction work, but the place was pretty impressive. I think it begs the question, how much bathing did they really need to do back then. Did wealthy people do anything else? I mean, everyone likes to hang out at the pool but their complex was a little ridiculous. The third attraction was a really long reflection pool that had some columns, arches, and statues around it. This was the spot that we had all seen lots of pictures of, so we played there for awhile. After our tour, we had some quick sandwiches outside and headed out to Villa D'Este which was about 20 minutes away.
The Villa D'Este is a pretty good sized estate with a lot of fountains. We first went inside the Villa which has a lot of frescoes depicting the trials of Hercules. It was built and owned by a super rich Cardinal that they called "the pope that never was" because he was one of the top contenders for pope 6 times. After walking through the villa we went outside to the gardens. The gardens had lots of beautiful fountains and water features. Probably the most impressive spot was a series of reflection pools lined with flowers that lead up to the main large fountain at the top of the axis. Above that fountain was a terrace with a water organ, a trellis of flowers, and some more beautiful fountains. We spent a fair amount of time there, exploring the different fountains and sculpture, and just taking goofy pictures.
This last Wednesday, we traveled to Villa Lante and the Parc de Monstre (park of monsters). The villa Lante...well there isn't much of a villa there. The villa is in some disrepair and it's pretty small. The walls are completely covered in frescoes and our tour guide explained that people at the time believed that having blank walls was bad luck because it made you think of death. I can't say I've ever looked at a white wall and automatically thought of death, but what ever floats your boat I guess. They also had scorpions painted all over the place, 77 in one loggia! Our guide kept calling it a craw-fish, but it was definitely a scorpion. The garden in front of the villa was full of manicured shrubs that were arranged in rectangles and little swirls. We figured out that when we pressed down on the rectangular shrubs, they jiggled like jello! We entertained ourselves that way for at least 15 minutes before the guide led us out of that section and on to the next. He explained that the garden had mostly shrubs and almost no flowers because they were too expensive and difficult to maintain. However, there were some super super ultra pink flowers at the top of some stairs. I had no idea flowers came in that color, they were practically neon. We played around in a few more fountains and water features, and found a partially dead tree that we could climb in. Score. After that we moved on to a more park like area away from the villa where we found a cat lair. Seriously there was at least 10 cats together around a little pond with cat food near by. Where did the cat food come from? Probably the old lady doing laps around the pond giving us the stink-eye. We also found two more pools close together- one had lots of tadpoles and the other had a bunch of frogs. It's a kiddie and adult pool! Adorable.
After the villa we headed to a little place for a nice sit down lunch. With full bellies, we hopped back on the bus and headed out to the Park of Monsters! This park is a mostly naturalistic park, minus the giant stone animals and monsters hanging around. We found a giant turtle, elephant, some people, a leaning building, and a HUGE scary face whose mouth you could climb in to and take pictures. We didn't have a guide here, so we just ran around and took pictures by what ever wasn't roped off. The park was actually smaller than I thought it would be, we got through it pretty fast and had tons of extra time so most people laid in a field next to a cute little temple. That was basically the end of our day other than a bus ride home. I have to say, touring gardens was a really nice break from all of the art museums and frescoes. Jello shrubs are much more entertaining!
Things that I've Learned:
You can never have too many "do not do (insert something)" signs. The Villa Lante had at least nine different things you couldn't do, such as: play soccer, bring a dog, play a trumpet, take pictures (even though it's outside and no one followed that rule), walk on closely spaced tables... actually we finally figured out that last one was supposed to be a banister. So many rules!
Water features encourage buffoonery. Buffoonery encourages picture taking.
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