DRAFT

The so-called Inferi Nymphaeum (Fig. 1, n. 23)

Contributor: Joshua Rosenheim
Published: 2021-04-21
Modified: 2025-06-29

Province

Region

Region IV

Location

Location Description

DESCRIPTION

Villa Adriana, erected by emperor Hadrian at the beginning of the II cent. A.D., occupies a vast area of 126 hectares. It was a beautiful estate strategically located near Tivoli and, at the same time, not very far from Rome (WINNEFELD 1895; KÄHLER 1950; AURIGEMMA 1961; RAKOB 1973; BROWN 1964). Prior to the Hadrianic settlement, an ancient villa, dating back to the late republican time, already stood there. Probably it belonged to Hadrian's family and, as a matter of fact, many scholars think that Hadrian chose this estate as the ideal one because he already knew the place and was attached to it (LUGLI 1927). Certainly he preserved and restored the original building and made it the nucleus of his private quarters.

The realization of this magnificent residence must have been a cherished dream of Hadrian, and he must have planned it long before becoming an emperor. This is the only way to explain how the works for its construction began immediately after his election and his return to Rome in 118 A.D. Hadrian died in 138 A.D. when his ideal residence was nearly completed. Nearly, because there was still some work to be done. Some important halls of the Great Baths were not finished, and the model for a Stadium, found among the ruins of his last building-yard in the quarters of the stonecutters (CAPRINO 1996-97; SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 1992-93, p. 73; SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 2000, pp. 144-147), was never brought to the unknown place where Hadrian had planned to build it. The Emperor's death put an abrupt end to all activities, and some of the gardens he planned to create, and for which fountains and pavilions had already been built, were never done or, if ever they were completed, seem to have been soon abandoned (SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 1992-93, pp. 000-000). As a matter of fact after him Villa Adriana was only partially lived in by his successors and was solely used for occasional visits. It became just one of the many country houses pertaining to the imperial praedia. Some of the existing gardens (Fig. 1), the ones nearer to the center of the residence and the monumental ones, were maintained and irrigated up to the end of the Roman Empire, a fact which is now proved by the concentration of extractable lead found in their soil, and which is due to the use of lead pipes for irrigation (FOSS ET ALII 1990; FOSS 1989-90; FOSS 1992; TIMPSON ET ALII 1994; FOSS, SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 1996). As a consequence of Hadrian's death, some others sites, which he had planned to be attractive and important, got no irrigation at all, thus their soil contains only a minimal quantity of extractable lead, about the same amount that is ordinarily found in modern agricultural fields.

Garden

The so-called Inferi Nymphaeum (Fig. 1, n. 23)

Keywords

Garden Description

The so-called Inferi (Figg. 68 and 69) is a garden arrangement placed a little South of the tomb and closely connected with the building called the "Temple of Pluto" set just East of it. This peculiar landscaping arrangement was created excavating a narrow artificial valley in the slopes of the grounds that here are climbing up towards the Santo Stefano Hill, while the Inferi's garden went down to rejoin the same level of the underground carriages' road, which, as a modern subway, connected all the buildings of Villa Adriana (MACDONALD, PINTO 1995, pp. 143-145; SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 1998, pp. 390-395, figs. 18-19; SALZA PRINA RICOTTI 2000, pp. 303-305, figs. 25, 138). The small vale, 128 m long and 17 m wide, terminated, at its southern extremity, in a dark grotto 5.10 m wide and 7.20 m deep (Fig. 68, P). At the end of the small cave a narrow cleaving (Fig. 68, A) not even 40-30 cm large and diminishing all the time, is all that is left of an ancient fountain (Fig.70). At Contini's time the grotto must have been nearly filled by soil and so it still was in the XIX century as we can see in a Penna drawing (Fig. 71), However Contini could have seen only the top of the Inferi. This can explain why the Roman 17nth century architect traced an inexistent gallery connecting the small nymphaeum with the trapezoidal system of large galleries which served as parking place and stables to the Great Underground Carriage Road. Contini, impressed by Aelius Spartianus' assertion "etiam Inferos finxit" (Hist. Aug., Hadr. 26.5), believed that all the gigantic underground parts of this area were a representation of the afterlife. Thus he supposed that a gallery must have connected with this antrum - which he thought to be the entrance of the reign of Pluto - with the Great Trapeze.

In reality the Inferi Nymphaeum, as any other part of Villa Adriana, was only linked to the underground road. A gallery starting from the middle of the eastern semicircular tunnel (Fig. 68, L) connected the little valley, and indirectly also the building called "Pluto's Temple", to the subterranean communication route (Fig. 68, E).

Today the small glen, which from 1969 on and through all 1972 was kept free of vegetation, has just been cleaned, and a kind of wild jungle, that developed in it during the last 30 years, has been uprooted. It needs badly to be excavated and the findings will certainly be rewarding. To begin with it is probable that an euripus will be found in its middle. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that, on both sides of the valley and just 16.50 m before the grotto, we find the openings of the two semicircular galleries leading to the nymphaeum (Fig. 68, B-C). One of them was surely necessary because from its middle started the gallery connecting it with the Great Underground Carriage Road; but the only objective of the other one (Fig. 68, C) was to reach the grotto. Why? If there had not been any hindrance anyone could have gotten there through the vale or, in case of a basin barring the entrance, even through the eastern gallery. There was no need of a second one. Thus this fact points up that:

1 - the access to the Nymphaeum must have been barred, probably by a basin (Fig. 68, H);

2 - a canal running up from the Nymphaeum to the end of the valley (Fig. 68, G) must have divided two sidewalks set on both sides of the small valley. Only this could create the necessity of a second gallery to connect the grotto with the western side of the dale.

Romans, as we know, never did anything unnecessary just for symmetry's sake. Hadrian who along the canal of the Canopus valley set a portico only where it was needed to protects the diners from the sun and not on the other bank which was already shaded by the hill, would never create an underground symmetrical gallery which could be admired only on a map. Moreover the presence of a canal in the middle of the valley seems to be confirmed by a probe conducted with an auger which found a difference of 0.50 m of depth between the sides of the valley and its center.

Coming back to the small cave, this grotto is surely what Aelius Spartianus called Inferi when he wrote "etiam Inferos finxit". The tight connection of it with the mysterious building known with different names - Elysian Fields (Ligorio), Serapis Temple (Piranesi), Pluto's Temple (Penna) - when compared in the same scale with the Telesterion and the nearby Plutonium of Eleusis (Fig. 67) might suggest that this creation was contrived by Hadrian as a memento of the Eleusinian mysteries to which, he had been initiated, and in which he also reached the highest degree.

Plans

Plan of the gardens at Hadrian's Villa
Fig. 1: Plan of Villa Adriana, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.
Plan showing the comparison between the small Plutinium grotto at Eleusis and the small inferi grotto at Villa Adriana
Fig. 67: Comparison between Eleusis and Villa Adriana, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.
Plan of the Valley and Nymphaeum of the Inferi at Hadrian's Villa
Fig. 68: Plan of the Valley and Nymphaeum of the Inferi, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.
Isometric plan of the Inferi Nymphaeum at Hadrian's Villa
Fig. 69: Isometry of the Inferi Nymphaeum, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.

Images

Photograph of the small grotto of the Inferi Nymphaeum at Villa Adriana
Fig. 70: The small grotto of the Inferi Nymphaeum, Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.
Drawing of the Inferi Nymphaeum at Villa Adriana, by A. Penna
Fig. 71: Early nineteenth-century drawing of the Inferi Nymphaeum, by A. Penna.
Credit: Courtesy of Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti.

Dates

Built between 118 and 138 CE

Excavation Date

unspecified

Bibliography

  • H. Winnefeld, Die Villa des Hadrian bei Tivoli, Berlin 1895, p. 154. (worldcat)
  • H. Kähler, Hadrian und sein Villa bei Tivoli, Berlin 1950. (worldcat)
  • S. Aurigemma, Villa Adriana, Roma 1961. (worldcat)
  • F. Rakob, "Der Bauplan einer kaiserlichen Villa," in W. Hartmann (ed.), Festschrift K. Langheit, Bönn 1973, pp. 113-125. (worldcat)
  • F. E. Brown, "Hadrianic Architecture," in L. F. Sadler (ed.), Essays in Memory of Karl Lehmann, New York 1964, pp. 55-58. (worldcat)
  • G. Lugli, "Studi topografici intorno alle antiche ville suburbane. VI. Villa Adriana. A. - Una villa di età repubblicana inclusa nelle contruzioni imperiali," Bullettino della Commissione archeologica Comunale di Roma 55, 1927, pp. 139-204. (worldcat)
  • C. Caprino, "Plastico marmoreo di uno stadio nella Villa Adriana a Tivoli," Rivista dell'Instuto nazionale di archeologia e storia dell'arte 3 s., 19-20 (1996-97), pp. 113-151. (worldcat)
  • E. Salza Prina Ricotti, "Nascita e sviluppo di Villa Adriana," Atti della Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia: Rendiconti 65, 1992-93, p. 73. (worldcat)
  • E. Salza Prina Ricotti, Villa Adriana: il sogno di un imperatore, Roma 2000, pp. 144-147. (worldcat)
  • J. E. Foss, J. T. Ammons, M. E. Simmons, S. Y. Lee, R. C. Minter, "Genesis of soil developed in volcanic tufa at Hadrian's Villa near Rome," Agronomy Abstracts ASA, Madison WL 1990, p. 291. (worldcat)
  • J. E. Foss, "Appendice. Soils of Hadrian's Villa," in E. Salza Prina Ricotti, "Il sistema di irrigazione della Piazza d'Oro," Atti della Pontificia Accademia romana di archeologia: Rendiconti 62 (1989-90), pp. 151-157. (worldcat)
  • J. E. Foss, "Appendice. Soils of Hadrian's Villa," in W. F. Jashemski, E. Salza Prina Ricotti "Preliminary Excavations in the Gardens of Hadrian's Villa: the Canopus Area and the Piazza d'Oro" American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 96, No.4 (Oct. 1992), pp. 595-597. (worldcat) (jstor)
  • M. E. Timpson, J.E. Foss, R. J. Lewis, C. A. Stiles, "Soil interpretation of some Roman archaeological sites in Italy and Tunisia," 15th Int. Congr. of Soil Science, Vol. 6b, 1994, pp. 172-173. (worldcat)
  • J. E. Foss, E. Salza Prina Ricotti, "Lead Pipes Use in Ancient Roman Irrigation System and Content of Pb in the Soil of Archaeological Sites," Bulletin of the Metals Museum, Vol. 26 (1996-II), Aoba, Aramaki, Aoba-ku, Sendai, Japan, pp. 33-47. (worldcat)
  • W. L. Macdonald, J. A. Pinto, Hadrian's Villa and Its Legacy, Yale University 1995, pp. 143-145. (worldcat)
  • E. Salza Prina Ricotti, "Adriano: architettura del verde e dell'acqua", in Horti Romani, Atti del Convegno Internazionale, a cura di M. Cima, E. La Rocca, Roma 1998, pp. 390-395, figs. 18-19. (worldcat)
  • E. Salza Prina Ricotti, Villa Adriana: il sogno di un imperatore, Roma 2000, pp. 303-305, figs. 25, 138. (worldcat)

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