Emperor Hadrian's Villa (Villa Adriana)

First week of classes- DONE! On top of having to go to class, (and getting assignments... what's with that?) it rained literally all week here. not so pleasant to walk around in all day, but on friday we had beautiful weather for our first class trip. Friday we headed east to the Dolomite mountains to visit Villa Adriana. This was the "villa" (more like an incredible city) Emperor Hadrian built for himself (yes himself) during the 2nd century. All day long we walked around, climbed through, photographed, diagramed, and sketched every inch of the massive site! The ruins were really unbelievable- to think that something built just before the bible was written could still be intact was hard to imagine. 

The most infamous thing about the construction though, was that Hadrian constantly experimented with architecture and engineering from examples he'd seen around the world on his years of travel. He had really advanced sewage systems, bathrooms, bath houses, fountains, waterfalls, and so on. A complex like this has not been topped by any built form to date, and has been studied by most of the great architects of our time!

Oh and for those of you who don't know the story of Emperor Hadrian, this guy inherited the position of emperor of from from his mentor (not even a blood relationship). During his reign in the 2nd century Rome had conquered literally every desirable kingdom, land, and power in the entire world. His reign was more powerful than any one person in history- as close as we've come to ever having one single world ruler. Everything/ anything Hadrian wanted was at his fingertips, and he used that power to it's fullest in developing the unbelievable grounds of Villa Adriana. 

Another fun fact: archeologists believe that they've only uncovered 50% of the villa- the other half of it could still be buried under the surrounding farmlands! In my photos on Flickr (link below) i have a photo taken of a model built of the reconstructed site, to give you a better idea of how massive this complex really is.

So to get the full effect of my day's adventures i uploaded quite a few (haha) photos of the day! Click HERE to check them out!

Hope all is well!