Marina De Franceschini
"Un paesaggio sacro nella Villa Adriana di Tivoli: la Spianata dell’Accademia"
in Experiencing the Landscape in Antiquity 2,
BAR S3107 edited by Armando Cristilli, Fabio de Luca, Gioconda di Luca
and Alessia Gonfloni, published by BAR Publishing (Oxford, 2022), pp.
457-464
The present landscape of Villa Adriana is the outcome of the cultivation of vines and olive trees since the Middle Ages, and then of the romantic idea of ‘Landscape with Ruins’ which dates back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
At the time of Emperor Hadrian, the landscape was completely different from today. There was a ‘natural’ landscape, the Campagna surrounding the Villa; but inside the villa the landscape consisted of a series of artificial esplanades, with gardens and buildings.
Thanks to the studies and discoveries of archaeoastronomy of my Accademia Project, we propose a new interpretation of the function and symbolic meaning of the Accademia Esplanade as a sacred landscape. It was the highest of the villa, a real Acropolis, reachable by an hidden path, similar to an initiatory path.