©MarinaDeFranceschini - Progetto Accademia
43 - INFERI OR UNDERWORLD
Description
The Inferi or Underworld has a long, narrow valley which ends to the south with a central Grotto, partly artificial. It was excavated in the thickness of the tufa bank, whose walls gradually rise as one proceeds towards the Grotto .
The valley is about 18 meters wide, but its length has never been ascertained by an excavation, and varies from 135 to 200 metres, in the various plans. It is outside of the visiting route.
The actual Grotto at the end of the valley has two concentric niches: the innermost is entirely excavated in the tufa rock, and has in the center the small cave E, which was a fountain.
La grotto of the Inferi with two concentric niches
The outermost niche framed the first: half is dug out of the tufa rock, the rest is in masonry, with a barrel vault surmounted by bricks.
Inside the cave, doors C and D give access to the two semicircular subterranean galleries dug into the tufa, which ended with two other doors A and B in the rocky walls of the valley, about twenty meters before the Grotto.
One of the subterranean corridors of the Inferi reveted with fake rocks
The semicircular galleries and the Grotto were entirely revetted with a special cocciopesto ashlar which imitated the rock of natural caves.
In the middle of the east semicircular gallery is another subterranean service corridor G, which joins corridor H and then reaches the Great Trapezium.
At the top left, above the Grotto is the rectangular cistern F with waterproof cladding in opus signinum, which fed the fountain E in the Grotto.
In the center of the valley there must have been a long water basin, which probably was revetted in white marble, as drawn by Piranesi.
Function and meaning
According to Ligorio this was the entrance to the Underworld of Villa Adriana mentioned in the Historia Augusta, because he found there a statue of Hercules with the dog Cerberus (lost).
According to Neuerburg, the Valley of the Inferi originally was a tuff quarry, from which building material was extracted for the Villa.
It was transformed by Hadrian into a Nymphaeum simulating a Grotto, whose fountain in E was fed by cistern F.
According to Salza Prina Ricotti, the subterranean tunnels were used to reach the central Grotto which was full of water, an unlikely hypothesis.
In our opinion, the semicircular subterranean galleries, artfully built to imitate rocky caves, could be used for underground ritual processions linked to the myths of the afterlife, such as those of the Eleusinian Mysteries or the Thesmophoria mentioned by other scholars.
A procession that made a circular path could be a symbolic representation of Time, which in the ancient world was circular and cyclical, and not in continuous evolution as it is today.
For more information, see the Author's article published in Archeologia Sotterranea in 2017
SEE: De Franceschini M. Tivoli - Gli Inferi di Villa Adriana (etiam inferos finxit). in Archeologia Sotterranea n. 14 ottobre 2017, pp. 19-35, with prevous bibliografy and discussion.
LAVAGNE 1988; SALZA 2000; DE FRANCESCHINI 2006