Villa Adriana is one of the most extraordinary examples of an imperial and dynastic palace or estate, but it defies any definition.

The usual comparison to the French palace of Versailles, to the Bourbon palace of Caserta near Naples, or even to Windsor Castle in England is reductive and insufficient.

Villa Adriana was something else: it had about forty different buildings over an area of ​​120 hectares, the size of Pompeii. It was a real city, with public representative quarters similar to the Imperial palace of the Palatine in Rome, and private quarters, with the features of a grandiose suburban Villa.

Villa Adriana was inspired in a completely original way by the legendary palaces of the Persian kings, immersed in the lush vegetation of fantastic garden-paradises, which we know only from ancient sources. And probably also to those of the Egyptian Pharaohs, of which nothing is left.

After the conquest of Greece, the Romans discovered the Hellenistic world and were dazzled by the luxury in which the dynasts lived, by the refinement of the arts and the precious objects with which they surrounded themselves.