Tivoli
Discover Tivoli
A concise introduction to Tivoli, its geography, history and culture.
Introduction
Tivoli is a hill town of about fifty-six thousand people on the edge of the Sabine hills, thirty kilometres east of Rome, where the Aniene river drops out of the mountains onto the Roman plain.
Three sites carry it, and they are not in the same place. Villa Adriana lies on the plain below the town, a twenty-minute bus ride out. Villa d’Este is in the centre, beside the main square. Villa Gregoriana occupies the gorge on the far side of town, and is a park rather than a house.
The town itself is medieval in plan with a Roman substructure, compact and steep, with a fifteenth-century fortress at the top. It has been a retreat for wealthy Romans continuously for over two thousand years, which is an unusual claim and a literally true one.
The other thing Tivoli produces is stone: the travertine quarried here built much of ancient and baroque Rome, and the quarries are still working.