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Roman gardens

by Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti

ROMAN GARDENS
As always, the Roman garden derived from the ancient orchards, and “Horti”, used in the plural form, were called their parks.
When the first roman gardens appeared in the town? Omitting a note of Pliny the Elder who cited an hypothetical garden of Tarquinius the Superb, it is only in the II cent. B.C. that we found one of them. As a matter of fact it was then (180 B.C.) that Ennius, the poet, enjoyed his morning stroll in the “Horti” of Sulpicius Galba, gardens that set on the Aventine hill, more or less where today we have the “Cavalieri di Malta’s Villa”, enjoyed a splendid position. For Cicero this was the first garden of Rome and there is no hint of others. From this moment, however, gardening had a rapid development.
Thus in the I cent. B.C. all the important personages of the republic’s end decided that, besides their luxurious town’s residences, they wanted to have a “Hortus”, a large wooded parks. Soon all around the centre of Rome there was a ring of gardens and in them there always was a residence for their masters. To sum it up the extremely wealthy patricians had a town’s house and a villa in the suburb, just as later on did the princely families of Rome and, starting from the Renaissance, we had large and well tended green areas as “Villa Borghese”, “Villa Aldobrandini” and so on.
Of course these parks were created in the most scenic positions existing in the immediate suburbs. Many occupied the southern Tiber’s banks and among the more interesting there was one occupying the area where now we have the “Lungo Tevere della Farnesina”. It is believed to have belonged to the most beautiful Clodia, the woman madly loved by the poet Catullus and by him called Lesbia. As in the excavations of this villa Isiac frescoes were found, some scholars thought that here might have resided Cleopatra who, during her stay in Rome, lived in Caesar’s gardens, and, as a consequence they attributed those Horti not to Clodia but to Ceasar. It was not however necessary to have an Egyptian mistress to cover one’s walls with nilotic frescoes. At those times this subject was quite popular, and of course this hypothesis is now widely rejected.
Caesar’s “Horti”, that were well wooded and enriched by pavilions and beautiful statues were, however, not very far from Clodia’s ones. Probably they stood just around the river’s loop. In the area there were also Mark Anthony’s ones and also these looked on the Tiber, but from the height of the “Gianicolo” hill, while Agrippina’s park, that occupied the “Vatican” area, were much more near the river and with a beautiful portico coasted the banks of the “blond Tiber”.
The parks we have just examined set their focus of interest on the Tiber; other ones chose to occupy the nearby hills all around Rome. On the west side of Villa Borghese gardens rose the Lucullus’ Horti. They must have been very beautiful but of them no trace has been left. Then, in the IV cent A.D., after many property’s changes, they were bought by the Pinciana family and Pincio is today called the “Villa Borghese’s” terrace looking over “Piazza del Popolo”.
On the direction that from the Pincio goes toward the actual Porta Pia we find what is left of one of the more beautiful park of Rome’s Sallustius’ gardens, a part of which had once been a garden owned by Caesar near the Collina’s gates. The Sallustius’s Horti were very extensive and occupied all the area that went from the Porta Pia’s gates up to the Pinciana’s ones. In them there was a 180 B.C. Ericina Venus’ temple and a splendid nymphaeum of Hadrianic times, the ruins of which can now be seen 14 m under the street level in the centre of Rome’s Sallustius’ square. The park was also rich of splendid statues and in it there was a circus so large that when the Circus Maximus was flooded and made impracticable, it was taken in consideration to held there the races and the games.
Then Sallustius and his heirs died and in the 20 A.D. these gardens were included in the imperial “praedia”. They soon became the preferred refuge of many emperors. Nerva died here and Vespasian spent in them lots of time. Aurelian, who liked the Horti of Sallustius much better than the Palatin, embellished them by building in them a yellow marble paved portico called the "porticus miliariensis", a thousand steps and, translated in our measurement, 300 m long. The porticus occupied all the length of the modern “Via XX Settembre” and Aureliano used to practice horse riding in it, and up and down he galloped until both him and his horse were completely exhausted.
Mecenas instead set his “Horti” on the Esquilinus hill. He was the first one to settle them there and Horace praised his gardens for the purity of the hair, the superb view over the Sabina and the Alban hills, and the long walk over the Servian walls. In these “Horti” enclosure there also was an extremely high tower that was even said to touch the sky. For Suetonius, the historian, it was from here that, witnessing the fire of Rome, Nero sang the fall of Troy.
Not much but something of Macenas’ “Horti” has been preserved. Apart of the great swimming pond, of which rests have been spotted, there is the Auditorium, a beautiful nymphaeum shaped as a small theatre and with its walls covered by frescoes. But it was not really a theatre: potted planted occupied all the structure’s steps and here they were irrigated by a system of pipes.
When Maecenas died he left his property to Augustus, and on his return from Rodi Tiberius lived here. Then, when Nero created his “Domus Transitoria”, he included Maecenas’horti in it.
Of course apart of those famous ring of extensive parks set all around Rome, some gardens existed also in the town. In his residence over the Quirinal, Atticus had a thicket in which he used to receive his friends, and Crassus’s Palatin’s residence had a proper park in which there were six gigantic “Lotos”, six trees from the Ulmaceae family so beautiful that their memory has been handed down to us. Crassus was certainly very proud of them if, when he sold his domain, he reserved to himself the property of these 6 trees’s.
To sum it up Rome was a green town and to this contributed the public gardens that in the first times were created an maintained by the munificence of the rich patricians and after them by the emperors. They usually were large enclosures flanked by very long porticoes. In Pompey’s one, an enclosure of 180 x 135 m there were fountains, rows of plane-trees and a splendid statue of a sleeping Faun. Livia’s Porticus was instead known for its vine plants, one of which covered an entire trellis, and Vipsania’s had a pleasant and perfumed laurel-trees thicket. Each one was special, but the most impressive and interesting among them was Agrippa’s Porticus. This park was set to the western side of the “Via Lata” and its focus of interest was water. In those “Horti” water was everywhere dominating all with a wide canal that followed all the length of the actual “Corso Vittorio” and a large a pond that occupied all the area between the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. People went to swim in its icy waters, and on the first day of every year Seneca used to plunge in it. The enclosure was then ended by a very long portico called the “Hecatostylon”, or a hundred columns.
From what we have written we see that Romans were accustomed to have many gardens in their towns, but the majority of them were public ones. Private gardens mainly existed along the boundaries of the town, and also if in the centre of Rome one could see some greenery in a private house it was always confined in very modest areas. No one however complained because the town was always left completely at the dispositions of the citizens, but when, after the great fire of Rome, Nero built his Domus Aurea, occupying all the centre of Rome with a park covering 80 hectares, an area extended from the Porticus of Livia to the Claudianum, and including the Palatinus up to the limit of the “Circus Maximus”, the Romans revolted and destroyed Nero.
Thus it is a pity that Nero did not decide to create his ideal residence outside of Rome, as, after his lesson Domitian and Hadrian did, because the “Domus Aurea” with its incredible park must have been one of the ancient world’s wonder; a unique monument of which now we can see only some subterranean dark parts and read some sketchy description that has been handed to us.
At Nero time the principal palace of the Domus Aurea, over which Trajan built his baths, was set on a low hill that dominated the scene. On the South side there was the grand entrance, a three floors high portico extended on three sides. Amid it there was the gigantic gilt statue of Nero, a colossus 40 m high that afterward, with he head of Nero susbstituted by the sun’s face was set in fronte of the Colosseum and to it gave its name.
But what is worse is that we have lost any possibility to reconstruct the magnificent park that extended itself in front of the gilted statue of Nero. It was centered around a depression where, later on, the Colosseum was built, and there Flavius and Celer, the two architects of the Domus Aurea, directed a series of springs and artificial small falls. The water, fed by the aqueducts, formed a lake,. Around there were all kind of pavilions, “Thermae”, exquisite statues, and a splendid landscaping with thickets, meadows and even pasturing animals: “Rus in urbe” it was called by the historians. A Splendid park but nothing is left of it except the possibility of dream

Bibliography

Scientific popularization
- E. SALZA PRINA RICOTTI, Dossier: I giardini nell'antichità in Archeo nº 69, November, pp. 50-97