Tivoli historical timeline

Tibur was a Latin town that claimed foundation before Rome and fought against it before being absorbed in 90 BC. By the late Republic it had become the place wealthy Romans went to escape the city in summer: Horace, Catullus and Maecenas all had property here, and the temples above the gorge date from that period.

Hadrian built his villa on the plain below between roughly AD 118 and 138 — not a house but an imperial complex covering about 120 hectares, with libraries, baths, theatres, guest quarters and a network of underground service roads so that staff and carts moved unseen. It reproduced buildings the emperor had admired across the empire.

The villa was stripped for centuries after Rome fell, and its marble and statuary are now spread across European museums. Much of what was taken in the sixteenth century went up the hill: Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, appointed governor of Tivoli in 1550 as compensation for failing to become pope, quarried Hadrian’s villa for material and built his own.

Villa Gregoriana is the most recent layer and the result of a disaster. After a catastrophic flood in 1826 Pope Gregory XVI had the Aniene diverted through a tunnel driven under Monte Catillo, creating the 120-metre Grande Cascata and the park around it, finished in 1835.