“I first went to Hadrian’s Villa, the incomparably beautiful rural residence of that most cultured of all Roman emperors, in 1967 with my father. I was a teenager for whom the long country road from Rome to the spa town of Tivoli seemed endless, and endlessly mysterious. It was impossible for a California kid to know what to expect beforehand, and expectation could never have rivaled the marvel of the real thing—its age, its beauty, and my father’s excitement, as informed as mine was formless. We climbed over vaults and crept through tunnels, watched the swans and carp navigate the murky green waters of the imperial reflecting pools, drank in the quiet and the breezes that softened the summer heat.” (via Trashing Hadrian’s Villa by Ingrid D. Rowland | NYRblog | The New York Review of Books)
