Home -> Articoli -> Villa Adriana

The Great Subterranean Carriages Road

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

The different Villa Adriana's buildings and their connection through the Great Subterranean Carriages Road

The great subterranean carriages road.

As we have already told, Villa Adriana was a small perfect town with many buildings which, scattered over its 126 hektares, had to be connected. Of course there were many alleys and lanes crossing its parks and gardens, but these were reserved to the Emperor, his guests and his retinue. Then, not to disturb with their bustle the leisure of the elite, the rest of Villa Adriana’s population moved through a network of underground passages. Hadrian, who had always hated the noisy traffic of Rome and who, with one of his first edict, had forbidden the passages of carts and horses in the center of the town, now in Villa Adriana solved the problem in a very brilliant way with underground galleries which were used both by servants going in and out of their working places. and by soldiers directed to their guard posts. In the meantime cart and carriages reached all the buildings through a kind of ante litteram subway. which by the author of this book was called “The great subterranean carriages road”.
The great subterranean carriages road was an artery, still in many tracts visible and practicable, which, up to a certain point, followed an old road going from Ponte Lucano up to the Santo Stefano hills. Just at its beginning, it had deeply cut the tufa between the ancient republican Villa’s property, and the Venus of Cnidus terrace, one of the many nearby properties which Hadrian had to buy to have a larger estate on which he could realize his project Later on, the two parts were connected by a vault. After this point the great subterranean carriages road ran partly on open air and part underground.
The first “station” was at the end of the terrazza di Tempe. Here all the people –retinue and guests- living at the Hospitalia dismounted, and with them also the soldiers that had to mount their guard at the Imperial Palace’s area,
Then came the Piazza d’Oro which was the second “station” after reaching which the great subterranean carriages road went down for good and did not emerge any more. Here the gallery which entered under the building was formed by two branches leading in different parts of the area and offering many exits. The first and many important one was a nearby gallery which turned to the right hand. Here, just after 15 m the vehicles had to stop in front of a gate because this was one of the entrance to the imperial area, and people had to be checked before entering it. There three carriages could wait in line. We can still see a part of a marble threshold, and, higher up on the wall, a deep semicircular track left by the beam that barred the door. Not far from it, on the outer wall of the gallery a large arch admitted the visitors coming to the Piazza d’Oro or to the Palace. Turning to their right the carriage’s axles had so much eroded the corner of this entrance tha it had become round. Evidently the vehicles followed the same way also when going out because this was the only corner so reduced. The other one was clear cut and straight showing that, returning from this place, no cart or carriage turned toward the western exit of the gallery. As a matter of fact in this one there was a steep slope and no tracks of wheels, and as this exit led to the service area (Palace’s kitchen and the servants’ quarters, called Caserma dei Vigili) it is probable that all the supplies were here brought there by mules.
Just at the front of this western gallery, on the eastern side of the central one, there was a large arch which probably allowed the vehicles to reach some outside parking places while their passengers went to a small arena to see the gladiators’ games. Hadrian, who had learned to fight in them and was very good at it, enjoyed very much this show.
In the mean time the central gallery went on in a southern direction but it was soon interrupted by a big cement block which had been made in the last century to sustain an asphalt road. Nowadays the Piazza d’Oro is as far as we can follow the road, but both Contini and Piranesi explored the road further and followed it up to the south eastern corner of the enclosure of the tomb which was set at the back of the Piazza d’Oro. Here they had to stop because the gallery was blocked by a land slide. Thus after, having found the nearby snow storages, they decided that the great subterranean carriages road could have passed through them and that the snow deposit constituted the missing part of the communication artery. Unfortunately they didn’t notice that, while the road ran at 7 m of depth, the snow storages were only 4.50 m under the level of the land. Moreover while the galleries were simply cut in the tufa, the storages were heavily plastered
However following the pits, which marked on the soil the great subterranean carriages road, they traced it not very much farther from their last sighting and going down they succeeded in entering a gallery blocked by a landslide on the southern side, but free on the northern direction. This was followed by a limited tract. Then it was blocked by a wall. Luckily this manufact was partly collapsed and it was possible to enter it through a hole. What we found on the other side was only a gallery that had just began to be built. Not far away from the collapsed wall a small lake barred the way (in the last years it did dry up, but in 1972 we found a lot of water). The lake seemed to be reason which pushed the workmen’s team to abandon the gallery and build a wall to prevent people to fall in the water.
Just on the eastern side of the collapsed wall another gallery went in direction of the tomb, but soon it was blocked and blocked was also the principal gallery directed to the Great Trapece. However it was possible to reach the Subterranean Carriage Road through the eastern semicircular arm of a tunnel connecting the Inferi small grotto with its exit in the dell, and then, probably, reaching the nearby great building called Tempio di Pluto, Campi Elisi and so on.
At last the Subterranean Carriage Road went on on a southern direction and entered this gigantic parking place called the Great Trapece.





Bibliography
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI ,Villa Adriana: il sogno di un imperatore. Roma 2001, Erma di Bretschneider
E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI - Criptoportici e gallerie sotterranee di Villa Adriana in Melanges de l'École Française de Rome, 14, Rome 1973, pp. 237-294, figg; 4-7, Tavv. I-XI