Visiting the Villas of Tivoli

I was so thrilled to have an entire week to spend in Rome this summer. Rome is Italy's gorgeous capital city, steeped in history and absolutely bursting with things to do, home to some of the most iconic landmarks arguably in the entire country.

I spent most of my week within the city, wandering thousand of steps every day trying to cover as much as I could of what I felt was a bit of an overwhelming place, with so much to see.

However, one of my days, I made a day trip out to nearby Tivoli to explore the famous villas, two of which - Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este - are UNESCO World Heritage sites!

Check out the reel I made documenting my day in Tivoli.

I traveled to Tivoli from Rome by public transport, so have written out a guide below how to visit all three villas using public transport and what to see at each:

How to Get to Villa Adriana / Hadrian's Villa from Rome by Public Transport

Villa Adriana - known as Hadrian's Villa in English - is the closest to Rome and so it made sense to start my day there. It's perhaps the most famous Villa in Tivoli, being a UNESCO listed site.

Take the metro to Ponte Mammolo. I was staying with a five-minute walk of a metro station, but find out however you need to get to Ponte Mammolo from your area. The metro cost me €1.50 for a 100-minute single ticket plus €0.50 for a reusable metro card.

At Ponte Mammolo station, buy a ticket to Villa Adriana from the ticket office on the main floor. Cotral buses run every 15 minutes on the quarter-hour from Ponte Mammolo to Tivolo, stopping near Villa Adriana on the way. The one-way bus ticket from Ponte Mammolo to Villa Adriana cost me €2.20.

Let the bus driver know you want to get off at Villa Adriana; the bus stop is 1.2km from the ticket office and there is a sign showing you which way to walk. This is the exact location of the Villa Adriana bus stop on Google Maps.

Walk the 1.2km up the road towards Villa Adriana. The ticket office is the first thing you'll arrive at.

Visiting Villa Adriana / Hadrian's Villa

You don't need to prebook tickets in advance (but you can, if you like). You can buy them on site at the ticket office. At the time of writing, it was €12 for an adult (with various discounts available). When you buy your ticket, you'll get a printed map of the whole villa pointing out key areas of interest that you might want to visit, and three different walking routes depending on how long you want to visit for.

I spent about an hour and a half at Villa Adriana; I've done my best to remember which spot I photographed below so you can have an idea of what there is to see. Of course, the highlight is the Canopo e Sarapeo / Canopus and Serapeum, which is perhaps the best known view in the whole site.

Villa Adriana was built between 118 and 138 AD by the Emperor Hadrian near Tivoli, across more than 120 acres. The ruins include residential buildings, baths, important buildings and gardens. Given the complexity of the site and the sheer vastness and scale of how much there was going on here, it's been a critical subject of research for many years. It's been a UNESCO site since 1999.

Visiting Villa Gregoriana

You don't need to prebook tickets in advance (but you can, if you like). You can buy them on site at the ticket office. At the time of writing, it was €10 for an adult (with various discounts available). When you buy your ticket, they'll share a QR code which gives you a map of the gardens and some key spots that you won't want to miss as you walk through.

Be prepared to do some walking - there are lots of stairs and they are a bit slippery in places. I spent about an hour at Villa Gregoriana which is all outdoors.

Villa Gregoriana isn't so much a villa anymore. It is now a set of paths through ancient ruins, caves and waterfalls. It is really mesmerizing and must have been surreal in its heyday - see the last photo for what it looked like.

In 1832, Pope Gregory XVI  promoted a grandiose work of hydraulic engineering to contain the continuous flooding of the Aniene, channeling its waters into a double tunnel dug into Mount Catillo and then artificially swelling them, thus creating the 120-metre drop of the new Cascata Grande, the second in Italy after the Marmore. Once the work was completed, the Pope created the Park that bears his name and which for over a century was a destination for artists, writers and men of culture who told the world about its beauty.