Monday 17th April

Today we drove an hour or so, round the southern edge of Rome, to Tivoli, the home of two famous and Unesco World Heritage listed, villas. One Roman and one Renaissance.

We parked at Hadrian’s Villa, he of Hadrian’s Wall fame and confirmed that Skye was allowed in.

Emperor Hadrian ruled the Roman Empire from 117-138 AD. Apparently he was not fond of the Emperor’s Palace in Rome and so decided in the early 120’s that a Villa should be built in the cooler hills near Tivoli. The Villa is said to be largest single set of buildings the Roman’s ever created. The site covers 7 square miles!

Yet again Sarah and I were amazed by the extensive remains. Buildings 10 or metres high still standing. Several with complete or partially complete concrete domes. After visiting Ostia Antica I did a little investigating to try to find out why Roman brick buildings have remained standing for 2000 years. Apparently Roman concrete and mortar was stronger than its modern equivalents. We use Portland Cement in our mix, whereas the Romans used a volcanic based powder. Chemists have found that not only is this stronger than modern concretes, its strength increases over time and under compression. So constructing large buildings with this Roman concrete actually increased concrete’s strength. Now you know!

The site is vast and contains, in addition to the palace, everything an Emperor and his 5000 employees and slaves could require. Two theatres, three sets of heated baths, a heated winter palace, a fishery, gardens, temples, tenement buildings several stories high etc. etc. etc. There is little more I can say and will let the photos do the talking.

When we finished at Hadrian’s Villa we headed for the centre of Tivoli for the night on a free car park next to a river. The car park was packed but we managed to squeeze into a parking space designed for a car by letting Basil’s ample bottom hang over a pavement.