‼️ VILLA ADRIANA - THE WINTER PALACE

✅ The Winter Palace, also known as the Building with Cryptoporticus and Peschiera, is one of the most impressive buildings of Villa Adriana and had three floors.

✅ The lower floor is on the same level as the Poecile and the Garden Stadium, onto which it opened with large windows. The central room was restored in the 1990's, reconstructing the collapsed vault. Several years ago it was possible to visit the various rooms and go to the upper floor with the original staircase. Today everything is closed.
The middle floor still has the magnificent Cryptoporticus that gives its name to the building, whose windows took light from a walkway that surrounded the great water basin called Peschiera (Fishpond).

✅ The Cryptoporticus was a sheltered place where it was possible to walk indoors, warm in winter and cool in summer. On its vaults there are several signatures of ancient scholars and visitors, including that of Giovan Battista Piranesi of 1741. The Cryptoporticus was closed to the public more than ten years ago, despite being one of the most spectacular and unique places in the Villa.
On that same intermediate level, there was a separate access to the winter heating systems of the upper floor: a real luxury, proves that this was the Winter Palace reserved for the emperor, since it was not a thermal building.

✅ On the upper floor of the Palace there were very high, imposing and richly decorated rooms. The opus sectile pavements were made with precious marbles of all colors, a few examples remain. They rested on the suspensurae, brick columns that created a cavity where the hot air that heated the rooms circulated. As always happens in the noble buildings of Villa Adriana, the walls were revetted with marble panels, the design of which can be partially reconstructed from the holes for the metal clamps that fixed them to the wall. The ceiling of another room still has fragments of the frescoes in bright colors.

✅ The imperial buildings of the Villa were monumental and scenographic, and had panoramic views: from the upper floor there was a magnificent view over the Poecile, the Garden Stadium and the Building with Three Exedras. And again towards the Canopus and the rest of the Villa.
The upper floor of the Winter Palace also communicated with a magnificent Hanging Garden, leading to another spectacular building of the Villa, the Panoramic Pavilion of the Praetorium which we will talk about on another occasion.

‼️ ️ Emperor Hadrian lived here!