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Tours from home
Hadrian's Villa, Evocations of a Man Through Architecture
- VIP
- Duration
- 1h
- Tips
- Activate audio and video on your devices to make sure you won't lose anything of the experience
- Logistic
- Required: Laptop or tablet, better, or otherwise smartphones, internet access, around 10-15 MB/s download speed and.. a good glass of wine!
- Sites Visited
Our itinerary is meant to retrace the path of an official guest visiting the Villa in order to meet the emperor.
Like a visitor coming from Rome, you'll approach the vestibule. Once inside, a stop to the bath as a relief after a long trip, before getting to the Canopus for a luxury dining.
The tour takes you then to one of the meeting rooms where Hadrian could show his political power through architecture, the real leitmotiv of his project!
What to expect
With a constant dialogue with me on a webinar you can enjoy the benefit of guide's knowledge combined with many visual aids taking you back to the II century AD.
Starting with a site presentation you'll be introduced to the owner of the Villa, the emperor Hadrian and two other satellite figures whose personalities are essential to learn about Hadrian, the man: his wife Vibia Sabina and his favorite Antinoo.
Hadrian was a passionate architect, his contribution on experimental solutions of some pavilions anticipate forthcoming arrangements in the roman architecture asserting themselves only in the following centuries. The constant use of vaults of any form and shape, the transition from convex to concave, from square to round, reveal his presence among the ruins.
Discover his taste on two utmost original architectural creations: the Canopus and Serapeum and the Maritime Theater an isolated Domus for the emperor to meditate.
Wandering around the site through images, you can discover how the use of the water is a file rouge in the architecture, the constant presence of fountains basin, pipes and channel were not only for practical use but meant to impress, a display of power combining nature with architecture.
The Villa was a sort of an open air museum full of statues, mosaics, frescoes removed by collectors through the centuries and nowadays located inside Museums worldwide. With the help of reconstructions you can enjoy each masterpiece in the original venue where it was thought and meant to be, recreating the tight connection between work of art and its context!
After having shared a lot of topics about the Villa, a question and answer session is planned to make the experience more interactive!
