The sanctuary of Hercules Victor in Tivoli is one of the largest complexes of Roman architecture of the Republican age. It belongs to the so-called Hellenistic sanctuaries, built after the conquest of Greece in 146 BC, and is the largest Italic sanctuary dedicated to Hercules, second in the Mediterranean only to that of Gades in Spain. It was built between the last decades of the second century BC and 82 BC, with further work, above all in the theatre, in the Augustan age; Suetonius relates that Augustus often administered justice here under the porticoes.
What to see
Ancient Tibur identified itself with the cult of Hercules, worshipped as a warrior god, Hercules Victor, as protector of trade and of transhumance, and also as Hercules Saxanus, protector of the travertine quarries. The sanctuary had a college of musicians, the tibicines, among the most important in Italy, and a college of Salii, priests who danced stamping the ground three times: dances and songs were held on the Ides of August, as Virgil recalls in the Aeneid. The complex, with the theatre set into the hillside below the temple, has much in common with the sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia at Palestrina.
The complex has a rectangular plan of 188 by 144 metres and, towards the river, five levels, falling to two towards the rock bank. On the north side the substructures descend for more than forty metres almost to the banks of the Aniene and are the best-preserved part, which has marked the landscape of Tivoli for more than two thousand years. On the third level the via tecta runs diagonally, a stretch of the via Tiburtina enclosed in a covered gallery, with large rooms facing the ridge; little more than half of it survives today, partly because of collapses and earthquakes such as that of 1349. On the fourth level was the temenos, the sacred space, with the temple at its centre on a hollow podium clad in moulded travertine, reached by a double staircase between two monumental fountains.
Visiting
The restoration of the sanctuary was completed in June 2011. Opening hours, tickets and visiting arrangements should be checked before going.
Our editors' tip
According to tradition, in protest at the limits placed on their profession, the Roman tibicines went on strike and took refuge in Tibur, guests of their colleagues at the sanctuary. And it was reportedly a wealthy oil merchant, Marcus Octavius Herennius, perhaps the same Herennius who was a musician and magistrate of the sanctuary, who brought the cult of Hercules Victor to Rome, building in the Forum Boarium the round temple long wrongly called the Temple of Vesta.
