The 16th century Grotto of Diana in the sumptuous gardens of the Villa d’Este in Tivoli, an hour’s drive outside of Rome, is reopening to the public after 50 years of closure and two years of meticulous restoration work. Funded by iconic Roman fashion brand Fendi, restorers from the Autonomous Institute of Villa Adriana and Villa d’Este (VILLÆ), who maintain the Renaissance estate and Hadrian’s country palace next to it, have brought the crumbling, darkened, moisture-damaged space back from the brink of dilapidation and literally turned the lights back on, showcasing the vivid polychrome wall and ceiling mosaics and reliefs as they were when they first enchanted the Este family in 1572.
The Villa d’Este, renown for the immense, complex terraced gardens with its iconic fountains that surround the extraordinary Late Mannerist villa, has been listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2001. It was commissioned in 1560 by Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este, son of Lucrezia Borgia and her third husband Alfonso I d’Este, who had spent the previous decade vying tenaciously for the papal mitre only to fail no fewer than six times. He finally gave up and decided to retire to Tivoli. He was a dedicated patron of the arts and had been deeply involved in renovations and construction of Este palaces in Ferrara, Rome, Siena and Fontainebleau. He was also the main mover and patron behind the restoration of his ancient neighbor, the Villa Adriana, the enormous country palace complex built by the Emperor Hadrian (117-138 A.D.).
Ippolito hired architect Pirro Ligorio to create a magnificent chateau with a giardino delle meraviglie (garden of marvels) that would become a model for stately gardens in Europe. The gardens were embellished with many fountains, basins, waterfalls and grottos. There were jets that were triggered when visitors walked through the arcades and some of the first hydraulic automatons ever built.
Inspired by the nymphae of ancient Greece and Rome, the Grotto di Diana was added to the gardens between 1570 and 1572 by Paolo Calandrino. Located in the upper level of the garden on the Cardinal’s Walk, it has a cruciform chambered design with large caryatids on the corners of the cross vault. The central area has a niche against the wall with a faux natural rocky backdrop and a fountain. Three arms of the cross feature barrel vaulted ceilings, bas reliefs and another fountain, and he third arm leads to a loggia that looks out over the hills with a perfect view of Rome in the distance.
The interior of the grotto is decorated with polychrome mosaics made of a variety of materials — stucco, shell fragments, enamels, glass paste tesserae, glazed majolica, semi-precious stones — that create texture and movement in the reflection of light. The vaulted ceilings feature marine motifs and the wall mosaics feature scenes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The floors have brown terracotta tiles in the loggia, and colorful glazed terracotta tiles featuring the emblems from the Este family heraldry, including lilies, eagles and apples.
Restoration of the grotto began in 2023. VILLÆ conservators found missing pieces of the sculptures and reliefs, mortar loss, oxidized metal supports and rapidly deteriorating mosaics and tiles, eroded by moisture and wind. The restoration focused on the most conservative intervention, using authentic materials and techniques wherever possible while incorporating modern elements when necessary: a protective glass panel added to the loggia with the view of Rome, a new lighting system that underscores the nymphaeum’s extraordinary colors and textures, a new walkway for increased accessibility.
The Grotto di Diana officially reopens to the public on May 6th.
More than 4,000 fragments from wall paintings have been recovered in the excavation of a 2nd century Roman villa in the Barberes Sud area of Villajoyosa, on the southeastern coast of Spain. The fragments are only beginning to be puzzled back together by conservators at the Vilamuseu, the city’s archaeological museum, but they already reveal rich decorations of plant garlands, birds and imitation architectural features like fluted columns with curved stucco decoration that give the murals a 3D appearance.
The work, carried out on a total of 842 m² [9063 square feet], has allowed the archaeologists to discover part of the floor plan of the villa, built during the reign of the emperor Trajan, with a part for industrial use, a patio or atrium with different rooms (probably for the use of the servants) and finally a large open-air space, porticoed with large columns, destined for the garden of the house, and surrounded by stately rooms, which at the time were richly decorated. Only the foundations of this part remain.
The walls were built with rammed earth (rammed clay), and appeared to have collapsed inside the rooms and the porticoed courtyard. One of the stately rooms preserved the entire collapse of its walls, the excavation of which was a very thorough task as fragments of painted plaster were preserved. Each fragment or group of fragments was consolidated by the company’s own restorers and that of Vilamuseu, prior to their extraction, and each of the layers of stucco was numbered and photogrammetrically measured (undistorted, full-scale photograph) to locate them, which will give an idea of the original composition.
Built on a hilltop overlooking the beach on what is today’s Spain’s glamorous Costa Blanca, Villajoyosa’s origins date back to the Bronze Age. In the 7th century B.C., the Phoenicians founded a colony there, the 8th known in Spain, as a stepping stone on the coastal trade route to their colony of Gadir (modern-day Cádiz) on Atlantic side of the Strait of Gibraltar.
The local Celtiberian population called the city Alon, known as Alonis in Greek, and had a shrine at the site from at least the 4th century B.C., but the Phoenicians were still there, as the remains of a Carthaginian industrial site dating to the 3rd century have been found there. After Carthage’s defeat in the Second Punic War (218-210 B.C.), its territories in southern Spain fell under Roman control, becoming part of the new province of Hispania Citerior. A Roman cohort built a military fort there during the Sertorian Wars in 83 B.C. and they controlled access to Alon’s seaport.
Under Rome, the city prospered from trade, thanks to its location on the Mediterranean and connection to land routes, and in 74 A.D. was granted privileged status as Municipium by the emperor Vespasian. The imperial era city was grand, with a monumental temples, public baths, a new commercial port and associated business district, a quarry, an aqueduct and numerous country and suburban luxury homes.
The Barberes Sur villa was a suburban estate on the Via Lucentina, the road that linked Alonis to Lucentum (modern-day Alicante). A surviving stretch of the road 28 feet long and 14 feet wide was discovered in 2017 and in 2020 the restored road was opened as an open-air museum. Under the foundations of the villa archaeologists found deep pits where gravel was dug out to build the Lucentum Road. They were filled in when the villa was built.
While the excavation of the villa continues, volunteers are helping conservators clean the fragments and help with the consolidation and reconstruction of the mural panels in the museum’s restoration laboratory.
Archaeologists have discovered an inscription containing the royal cartouche of 20th dynasty Pharaoh Ramesses III (1186–1155 B.C.) in southern Jordan. This is the first inscription of an Egyptian pharaoh’s name ever found in Jordan.
The inscription was discovered southeast of the Wadi Rum Reserve near Jordan’s border with Saudi Arabia. A joint mission of Jordan’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities and the Saudi Heritage Commission is investigating the area as part of an initiative to document any evidence of Ramesses III’s military campaigns in the region.
Ramesses ruled for 32 years, a period of great tumult when cultures around the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East collapsed. The great political and economic powerhouses like Mycenaean Greece and the Hittite Empire, crumbled in violent chaos, causing a precipitous plunge in material comfort. Egypt was greatly weakened in the Late Bronze Age collapse, under constant attack by invaders on sea and land and rent by internal warfare, but Ramesses’ long, steady leadership slowed the decline.
[Egyptian archaeologist Dr. Zahi] Hawass emphasised the importance of the find, explaining that the inscription includes two cartouches bearing the birth name and throne name of Ramses III, a ruler of Egypt’s Twentieth Dynasty. The presence of his name in Jordan suggests far-reaching influence and warrants further investigation, the statement said.
“The discovery is crucial,” Hawass said. “It could open the door to a deeper understanding of Egypt’s interactions with the southern Levant and Arabian Peninsula over 3,000 years ago.”
Research into the find and analysis of the inscription is ongoing and full inscription’s interpretation will be published when the investigation is complete. Egyptian and Jordanian authorities hope to work together in a future excavation of the site to uncover any other material evidence of Ramesses’ activities in the region.
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