[Illustration: Temple of the Sibyl at Tivoli.]
Of all the hilly spots in the neighbourhood to which foreign residents
or the natives repair to avoid the great heat and malaria of Rome during
the summer, none is so beautiful and otherwise remarkable as Tivoli. It
is situated at the distance of about twenty English miles from Rome, on
the ridge of a high romantic hill, whose sides are covered with olive
groves, dotted here and there with convents and villas, and masses of
ancient Roman ruins. The still loftier summits of Monte Catily, and a
semicircular range of the Sabine mountains shelter it on one side,
whilst the other side commands an open and extensive view of the
_Campagna_, or great plain in which Rome is situated; and beyond the
Campagna the eye reposes on the blue waves of the Mediterranean Sea.
Tivoli is a considerable town, having a population of nearly ten
thousand souls. It contains some fine stately mansions, but the mass of
the habitations being mean and dirty, it cannot be called a handsome
town. The transition, however, to it from the magnificence of Rome
during the sultry weather is most delightful; and the visitor’s
enjoyment is increased by seeing around him, in spite of their idleness,
poverty, and rags, a rosy-cheeked, healthy-looking population,
altogether different from the inhabitants of the city and the plain he
has left. The journey from Rome _is_ performed in good part, and _can
be_ performed in its whole length, over an ancient road, whose pavement
is in many places in as perfect preservation as when, two thousand years
ago, the poet Horace loitered along it on his way to his pleasant Sabine
farm. Objects of antiquity and historical interest are crowded on this
route; and when the traveller reaches Tivoli, where traditional names
identify the sites of the villas of Piso, Varus, Lepidus, Cassius, the
poet Catullus, and other great men of old Rome, he is conducted to an
inn called “Of the Sibyl,” from the windows of which his eye embraces a
magnificent cascade, and the elegant antique temples of the Sibyl and of
Vesta. The two temples and the cascade just mentioned are the principal
ornaments of Tivoli. The cascade is produced by the river Anio, now
called the Teverone, which after winding through the Sabine vales,
glides smooth and silently through Tivoli till it reaches the brink of a
precipice, where it throws itself in one mighty mass of waters down a
deep and dark chasm in the rocks:--there it roars and foams in a narrow
channel, till finding an opening in the rocks it rushes headlong through
it, and descends into caverns and abysses “deeper and deeper still.” The
view of the double fall which is obtained by descending into the narrow
dale through which the river flows after the cascade is one of the
finest that can be conceived. The whole height of the cataract is about
two hundred feet. The rocks that resist this tremendous and
never-ceasing lashing of the waters are disposed in a narrow
semicircular form; they are in part clothed with shrubs and foliage, and
indented with romantic caverns; and in one place the river has worked
its way through a rock and formed a natural bridge, which, whether seen
from below, or in passing over it, is a most peculiar and striking
object in the scene.
On the summit of the lofty and precipitous rock that flanks this gulf on
the right, stands the temple traditionally, and most probably correctly,
called of the Sibyl, though some antiquaries have chosen to dedicate it
to the goddess Vesta. This truly beautiful pile is circular. It was
formed of eighteen pillars in the finest style of the graceful
Corinthian order, but of these pillars ten only remain with their
entablature. Nothing can be more striking and felicitous than its
situation, which even surpasses the intrinsic beauty of its structure.
The contrast of its placid gracefulness with the turbulence and fury of
the water immediately beneath it, also adds to the exquisite effect it
produces. “This singular ruin, the most beautiful of them all,” says the
acute Forsyth, “has been too often engraved to need any details: yet,
though prints may combine it with the immediate landscape, what pencil
can reach into the black gulf below?”
The other temple of Tivoli stands very near to that of the Sibyl, whose
name it frequently usurps; but time and man have been less merciful to
its beauty. Only four pillars are left, and they are embedded in the
walls of a parish church, which is itself abandoned and now becoming a
ruin.
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