Last Friday aArchitecture and Art Students went on a field trip an hour south of Rome to beautiful Tivoli. Our first stop was Hadrian’s Villa which functioned as Roman Emperor Hadrian’s retreat from urban Rome where he ruled upon the Palatine Hill from 117-138 AD. The history of the grounds was unfathomable; every once in a while among the rubble we would encounter original marble tiles that ancient rulers walked upon almost 2000 years ago. I couldn’t help but find it unfortunate that no matter how hard I tried I could’t really feel the weight of all that time, just as it is difficult to truly conceptualize all the stars in the sky.
I thoroughly enjoyed our second stop, Villa d’Este, with its extravagant garden and interesting art exhibition. The exhibition entitled EVA vs EVA explores the anthropological and aesthetic fascination with what they called “the eternal feminine” through art and artifacts from antiquity to the 20th century, focusing on a duality of female representation from mother figure and goddess to witch and femme fatale.
Though the exhibition was my favorite part of the trip, the garden seemed to be the biggest hit amongst most. The garden, lined with citrus trees, boxwoods and grandees fountains, overlooked mountains and countless olive trees. It was a peaceful day retreat from the city.
Hungry after climbing from the bottom to the top of a mile long hill to the meet the bus, we all bought fresh tangerines from a local woman’s fruit stand.
written by Margaret Groton
photographs by Margaret Groton
photographs by Abram Colette