Gaius Julius Solinus citesCato the Elder's lostOrigines for the story that the city ofTibur was founded by Catillus the Arcadian, a son ofAmphiaraus, who came there having escaped the slaughter atThebes, Greece. Catillus and his three sons Tiburtus, Coras, and Catillus[i] drove out theSiculi from the Aniene plateau and founded a city they named Tibur in honor of Tiburtus.[3] According to another account, Tibur was a colony ofAlba Longa. Historical traces of settlement in the area date back to the thirteenth century BC.Tibur may share a common root with the riverTiber and the LatinpraenomenTiberius.[4]
FromEtruscan times Tibur, aSabine city, was the seat of theTiburtine Sibyl. There are two small temples above the falls, the rotunda traditionally associated withVesta and the rectangular one with the Sibyl of Tibur, whomVarro callsAlbunea, the water nymph who was worshipped on the banks of the Aniene as a tenth Sibyl added to the nine mentioned by the Greek writers. In the nearby woods,Faunus had a sacred grove. During theRoman age Tibur maintained a certain importance, being on the way (theVia Tiburtina, extended as theVia Valeria) that Romans had to follow to cross the mountain regions of theApennines towards theAbruzzo, the region where lived some of its fiercest enemies such asVolsci,Sabines, andSamnites.
At first an independent ally ofRome, Tibur allied itself with theGauls in 361 BC. Vestiges remain of its defensive walls of this period, inopus quadratum. In 338 BC, however, Tibur was defeated and absorbed by the Romans. The city acquired Roman citizenship in 90 BC and became a resort area famed for its beauty and its good water, and was enriched by manyRoman villas. The most famous one, of which the ruins remain, is theVilla Adriana (Hadrian's Villa).Maecenas andAugustus also had villas at Tibur, and the poetHorace had a modest villa: he andCatullus andStatius all mention Tibur in their poems. In 273,Zenobia, the captive queen ofPalmyra, was assigned a residence here by the EmperorAurelian. The second-century temple of Hercules Victor is being excavated. The present Piazza del Duomo occupies the Roman forum.
In 547, in the course of theGothic War, the city was fortified by the Byzantine generalBelisarius, but was later destroyed byTotila's army. After the end of the war it became a Byzantine duchy, later absorbed into thePatrimony of St. Peter. After Italy was conquered byCharlemagne, Tivoli was under the authority of a count, representing the emperor.
From the tenth century onwards, Tivoli, as an independent commune governed by its elected consuls, was the fiercest rival of Rome in the struggle for the control over the impoverished central Lazio. EmperorOtto III conquered it in 1001, and Tivoli fell under thepapal control. Tivoli however managed to keep a level of independence until the 15th century: symbols of the city's strength were the Palace of Arengo, theTorre del Comune and the church of St. Michael, all built in this period, as well as the new line of walls (authorized in 1155), needed to house the increasing population. Reminders of the internal turbulence of communal life are thetower houses that may be seen in Vicolo dei Ferri, Via di Postera, Via del Seminario and Via del Colle.
In the 13th century Rome imposed a tribute on the city, and gave itself the right to appoint a count to govern it in conjunction with the local consuls. In the fourteenth century, Tivoli sided with theGuelphs and strongly supportedUrban VI againstAntipope Clement VII. KingLadislaus of Naples was twice repulsed from the city, as was thecondottieroBraccio da Montone.
During theRenaissance, popes and cardinals did not limit their embellishment program to Rome; they also erected buildings in Tivoli. In 1461Pope Pius II built the massive Rocca Pia to control the always restive population, and as a symbol of the permanence of papal temporal power here.
From the sixteenth century the city saw further construction of villas. The most famous of these is theVilla d'Este, aWorld Heritage Site, whose construction was started in 1550 byPirro Ligorio for CardinalIppolito II d'Este and which was richly decorated with an ambitious program offrescoes by painters of late Roman Mannerism, such Girolamo Muziano,Livio Agresti (a member of the "Forlì painting school") orFederico Zuccari. In 1527 Tivoli was sacked by bands of the supporters of theemperor and theColonna, important archives being destroyed during the attack. In 1547 it was again occupied, by theDuke of Alba in a war againstPaul IV, and in 1744 by theAustrians.
In 1835Pope Gregory XVI added theVilla Gregoriana, a villa complex pivoting around the Aniene's falls. The "Great Waterfall" was created through a tunnel in the Monte Catillo, to give an outlet to the waters of the Aniene sufficient to preserve the city from inundations like the devastating flood of 1826.
Sanctuary of Hercules Victor (second century BC) was one of the largest structures in central Italy at the time, and was located outside the ancient city, across the road leading to Rome andSamnium. Measuring 188 by 140 metres (617 by 459 ft), it included a theatre, a large porticoed square and the temple. It was reached through a series of terraces, in a similar fashion to the Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia inPalestrina. The sanctuary also housed one of the more frequented council of musicians in Roman Italy;
Romanamphitheatre of Blaesus of first half of the second century AD, coincided with the construction of Hadrian's monumental villa not far away. It held about 6,000 spectators. An inscription (CIL XIV, 4259) gives the benefactor, M. Tullius Blaesus;
CircularTemple of Vesta on the acropolis, (probably of the Sibyl);
Rectangular Temple of "Tiburtine Sibyl" (probably of Tiburno). It was built in the second century BC on an artificial platform in the acropolis. Characterized byIonic columns (only two of which remain today), it measures 15.90 by 9.15 metres (52.2 by 30.0 ft). The interior was decorated by frescoes and stuccoes, now lost;
Villa known as ofBrutus; 1km south of Tivoli centre on the road to San Gregorio are the remains of this large terraced late Republican villa supported by doublecryptoportici around a central area of several spacious rooms. Many fountains were used in the design;
Roman so-called Temple della Tosse, located on the ancient via Tiburtina near the Temple of Hercules and the Villa d'Este. It is a circular structure with a hole in the 12-metre (39 ft) diameter dome. From the discovery of a plaque it seems that the building was built in the first half of the fourth century during the reign of Constantine I, on the ruins of a Roman villa of the first century BC, to commemorate the works carried out on the Via Tiburtina. Several hypotheses have been advanced, including that it was anymphaeum, a temple dedicated to Venus or the Sun or a tomb of the gens Tuscia, from which the current name would later derive. The dome is similar to that of the Pantheon (i.e. with an oculus). The central brick body is divided into two levels, one older on which the entrances were located, the other above on which there are three large rectangular niches and four semicircular niches. In ancient times it was covered with marble, as evidenced by the fixing holes. It rests on a base ofopus reticulatum of the villa from the 1st century BC and of reused material from ancient buildings;
Tivoli's quarries producetravertine, a particular whitecalcium-carbonate rock used in building most Roman monuments. The water power of the falls supplies some of the electricity that lights Rome. The slopes of the neighbouring hills are covered with olives, vineyards and gardens; the most important local industry is the manufacture of paper.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Tivoli".Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
Tivoli., a poem byLetitia Elizabeth Landon published in The Bijou annual for 1829 to accompany an engraving of 'The Cascade of Tivoli', a painting by Henning.
