DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.16632#0140
112
History of Garden Art
had made certain parts of his villa in memory of his own travels, and called them after
important spots, such as Lyceum, Academy, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poikile, Tempe, and
had even made an Under-world. All this was to serve him as a symbol, in his dream of
re-establishing the glory of Greece.
These varied tales, casually thrown together by Spartianus, were destined to act as
a bone of contention among later inquirers. The first person to take action was Ligorio,
and he was quick to bestow these names on what was left of the ruins; they remained,
and we have only advanced to-day in so far as doubt has been thrown upon all Ligorio's
design. Garden sites are attached to most of these places, but by reason of the destruction
FIG. 77. HADRIAN'S VILLA-THE WALL OF THE SO-CALLED POIKILE
and looting that went on for hundreds of years, their traces have utterly vanished at this
villa, and the hope of finding any light later on is now very weak.
To a visitor who enters from the north, the first imposing sight (if he has passed
over the theatre and the various colonnades) is no doubt the portico, two hundred metres
long, that Ligorio calls Poikile (No. 5 of the plan, Fig. 76). It is above a xystus, extremely
well preserved, and forms the north side of a great double hall, whose huge dividing wall
is still standing at its whole height (Fig. 77). On the south this wall forms the long side of
the great hippodrome (5), which has its usual form with similar colonnades on all four
sides. It must have taken a great deal of digging and undermining to make this ground
level on the south-west. In the middle of this hippodrome, which is rounded off on both
sides, there is a basin that suggests an extension; and on the eastern narrow side there is
a charming summer-house, and in the middle of the long side on the south an exedra.
History of Garden Art
had made certain parts of his villa in memory of his own travels, and called them after
important spots, such as Lyceum, Academy, Prytaneum, Canopus, Poikile, Tempe, and
had even made an Under-world. All this was to serve him as a symbol, in his dream of
re-establishing the glory of Greece.
These varied tales, casually thrown together by Spartianus, were destined to act as
a bone of contention among later inquirers. The first person to take action was Ligorio,
and he was quick to bestow these names on what was left of the ruins; they remained,
and we have only advanced to-day in so far as doubt has been thrown upon all Ligorio's
design. Garden sites are attached to most of these places, but by reason of the destruction
FIG. 77. HADRIAN'S VILLA-THE WALL OF THE SO-CALLED POIKILE
and looting that went on for hundreds of years, their traces have utterly vanished at this
villa, and the hope of finding any light later on is now very weak.
To a visitor who enters from the north, the first imposing sight (if he has passed
over the theatre and the various colonnades) is no doubt the portico, two hundred metres
long, that Ligorio calls Poikile (No. 5 of the plan, Fig. 76). It is above a xystus, extremely
well preserved, and forms the north side of a great double hall, whose huge dividing wall
is still standing at its whole height (Fig. 77). On the south this wall forms the long side of
the great hippodrome (5), which has its usual form with similar colonnades on all four
sides. It must have taken a great deal of digging and undermining to make this ground
level on the south-west. In the middle of this hippodrome, which is rounded off on both
sides, there is a basin that suggests an extension; and on the eastern narrow side there is
a charming summer-house, and in the middle of the long side on the south an exedra.