Historic site

Villa D'Este Tivoli

Name: Villa D'Este Tivoli
Address: 5 Piazza Trento, Tivoli, Lazio, IT

14 locals recommend,

Tips from locals

Alessandra

September 19, 2021

amazing Reinassance VIlla with a unique park and Unesco Heritage. Not far from Villa Adriana, I would suggest a visit if you would like to spend a day out of the city center, Villa D'Este and Villa Adriana (same area) it is really worth it!

Enrica

October 9, 2019

The Villa d'Este is a 16th-century villa in Tivoli, near Rome, famous for its terraced hillside Italian Renaissance garden and especially for its profusion of fountains. It is now an Italian state museum, and is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site.

Lorenzo

October 7, 2019

Villa d'Este in Tivoli is a villa of the Italian Renaissance and is included in the UNESCO World Heritage List. The villa was commissioned by Cardinal Ippolito d'Este, son of Alfonso I and Lucrezia Borgia (Ferrara 1509 - Rome 1572), on a site formerly the site of a Roman villa. The history of its construction is linked to the events of the first owner. Pope Julius III del Monte wanted to thank Cardinal d'Este for the essential contribution he gave in 1550 to his election to the papal throne by appointing him governor for life of Tivoli and of his territory. The cardinal arrived in Tivoli on 9 September and made a triumphal entry there, discovering however that he would have to live in an old and uncomfortable convent annexed to the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, built centuries earlier by the Benedictines, now held by the Franciscans and partially adapted to governor's residence. The work was entrusted to the architect Pirro Ligorio, flanked by an impressive number of artists and artisans. terraces and slopes, with a central longitudinal axis and five main transverse axes, masterfully connecting and connecting the different slopes of the garden, using an architectural scheme typical of Roman cities. The original entrance, however, was placed on the ancient via del Colle, near the church of San Pietro, whose apse backs one side of the garden, giving the visitor much more majesty and charm to the complex. The original design, in addition to the landscape that can be enjoyed from the various floors of the garden, the fountains with their water features, the trees and plants of various species made the garden of Villa d'Este a model for realization of many successive. All this cost Ligorio a long and demanding job: he exploited the old city walls as buttresses for the construction of the embankment, and solved the problem of supplying the great abundance of water that was needed to run all the fountains he had planned to build. , calculating the precise quantities. For this reason he built a system of pipes and a tunnel about six hundred meters long, under the city of Tivoli, which brought the water directly from the Aniene to a tank: the flow rate was 300 liters per second. All the fountains were then fed without the use of any mechanical device, but only by exploiting the natural pressure and the principle of communicating vessels. The result is only partially visible today: 35,000 m2 of gardens, 250 jets, 60 springs of water, 255 waterfalls, 100 basins, 50 fountains, 20 exedras and terraces, 300 gates, 30,000 seasonal rotation plants, 150 tall trees, 15,000 perennial ornamental plants and trees, 9,000 m2 of avenues, paths and ramps.