📍Villa Adriana, Largo Marguerite Yourcenar 1, 00010 Tivoli, Italy
128 – 138“My family came from Italica in Spain, and when my father died when I was ten, my cousin, the future emperor Trajan, became my guardian. I spent half my reign on the move, from Britain, where I built my wall, to Greece, Asia and Egypt, and everywhere I went I collected places in my memory. From about the year 118 I built a villa of my own in the plain below Tivoli, east of Rome, and over sixteen years it grew into something like a city across three hundred acres: palaces, baths, libraries, gardens and pools, with buildings I named after the places I loved — the Lyceum and Academy of Athens, the painted Stoa, the Vale of Tempe. Most precious to me was a little round island house inside a moat, ringed by columns, with its own rooms, where I could pull up the bridges and be alone. I also built a long pool, the Canopus, after the canal near Alexandria, lined with statues and ending in a half-domed grotto where we dined looking down the water. After my beloved Antinous drowned in the Nile, I filled the villa with his likeness. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”
🗺️ Approximate location today
📍 Street view today