To feed the fountains, Pirro Ligorio had a tunnel of about 600 metres dug under Tivoli to bring water from the river Aniene to a holding basin: 300 litres a second, and not one pump. The garden still works that way, on natural pressure and communicating vessels alone. The villa itself began as a consolation prize: appointed governor of Tivoli for life, Cardinal Ippolito II d'Este, son of Alfonso I and Lucrezia Borgia, reached the town in September 1550 and found that his residence was to be an old Franciscan convent. He decided to turn it into a villa, handed the design to Ligorio and took much of his marble from the ruins of Hadrian's villa just below.
What to see
The garden drops more than forty metres, over terraces linked by ramps and stairs. At the top the Oval Fountain, finished by Ligorio in 1567, gathers its water in a wide exedra behind a falling sheet you can walk under; from there the Avenue of the Hundred Fountains crosses the full width of the garden in two stacked rows of masks, lilies and obelisks, and ends at the Rometta, where ancient Rome is rebuilt in miniature with the Tiber Island shaped like a ship. On the opposite side stand the two hydraulic machines: the Organ Fountain, whose compressed-air mechanism was brought back into service in 2003, and the Owl Fountain, where bronze birds sing until the owl silences them.
The Dragon Fountain was thrown up in a hurry in September 1572 for a visit by Pope Gregory XIII; the Bicchierone, a notched cup pouring into a shell, was designed by Gian Lorenzo Bernini in 1661; the Neptune Fountain, the most theatrical of all, dates only from 1927. Altogether there are 35,000 square metres, 250 jets, 255 cascades, 100 basins and 50 fountains. In the palace, the main floor was painted by a team under Livio Agresti with Girolamo Muziano, Cesare Nebbia and Federico Zuccari, and in the lower apartment a fresco shows the plan of the villa with the palace still unfinished. The cardinal lived just long enough to inaugurate it and died on 2 December of that same year.
Visiting
From Rome, take the train from Tiburtina or a regional coach from Ponte Mammolo; the villa is inside the old centre of Tivoli, five minutes on foot from Piazza Garibaldi. Today's entrance is the upper one, through the palace: you go down on the way in and climb back on the way out, over uneven paving and narrow steps that turn slippery in rain. Two hours is the minimum to see the fountains without rushing. The Organ plays at regular intervals, the first time at 10:30, and the Owl shortly after, so it pays to build your route around those times. Hadrian's Villa is run by the same institute and lies a few kilometres away, but it is another half day of walking.
Our editors' tip
Once inside, we ignore the central axis: we take a side ramp, go straight down to the bottom, then climb back. Ligorio designed the garden for people arriving from below, by the old hill road, and only on the way up do the terraces open one after another in the order he intended. We finish on the loggia at the top, where the whole Roman countryside is laid out and, on clear days, Rome at the end of it.
