VILLA ADRIANA - THE SMALL LIBRARY OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE
‼️ VILLA ADRIANA - THE SMALL LIBRARY OF THE IMPERIAL PALACE
✅ In the Imperial Palace there are the remains of a room that belonged to an ancient republican villa (1st century BC), which was incorporated into the buildings of the Emperor Hadrian. Originally it was a Tablinum, the room where the most precious objects of the Roman domus were put on display.
✅ This room was interpreted as a small private Library, where manuscripts and papyri were kept in the niches. In the Museum of Roman Civilization of the EUR in Rome [Museo della Civiltà Romana] there is a reconstruction of an ancient Roman library, very similar to this one in Villa Adriana.
✅ The room is quadrangular, and along the walls has a masonry podium, above which there are several niches. The wall in front of the entrance has a large semicircular niche in which a statue was placed; on its sides were two rectangular niches. The other two side walls had three rectangular niches each, while the wall towards the entrance one had two rectangular niches on both sides of the access door.
✅ Nothing is left of the decoration. The podium had to be revetted with marble, while in the niches there are no traces of nail, so it is likely that they were plastered and inside there were wooden cabinets, as can be seen in the reconstruction.
✅ The floor of the Library was in opus sectile, with white marble hexagons, of which only the imprints and few slabs remain. The portico outside that was originally the atrium of the republican domus, where some rectangular slabs of the opus sectile floor in with marble of various colors remain. It belongs to the Hadrianic phase of the building.
✅ The real and great Library of Villa Adriana was, however, located in Piazza d’Oro, as we will explain in a future post.
‼️ The Emperor’s private Reading Room.