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VILLA ADRIANA. GREEK LIBRARY

VILLA ADRIANA. THE GREEK LIBRARY

It is one of the most complex and peculiar buildings in Hadrian's Villa, located not far from the Poecile and the Maritime Theater.

The name Greek Library is obviously fictitious, created in the 16th century by Pirro Ligorio to distinguish it from the nearby Latin Library. Pirro Ligorio, as antiquarian at the court of Cardinal Hippolytus II d’Este, Governor of Tivoli, designed Villa d'Este for him and to decorate it, made the first large-scale excavations at Hadrian's Villa in search of statues and other treasures.

The Greek and Latin Libraries overlook a large artificial esplanade, the Upper Terrace of the Libraries, which is bordered by a long retaining wall decorated with alternating rectangular and semicircular niches. Two of those niches house stairs that led up to them from the Lower Terrace of the Libraries.

The Upper Terrace is decorated with a long fountain with octagonal basins at each end, behind which are the monumental facades of the two Libraries and another heart-shaped fountain.

Both Libraries had two large adjoining halls, once covered by a cross vault; the irregular shape of the other rooms served to link their orientation with that of the adjacent Library Courtyard, which was different.

The entrance to the Greek Library has twin stairs that lead to the first large quadrangular hall, whose cross vault has collapsed. Three rectangular niches remain on each side, while a fourth niche opens with a window onto the second large hall, which was also once covered by a cross vault.

The building had two floors, and in the corridor on the west side two stairs can still be seen: one descends to the Maritime Theater, and the other (closed to the public) ascends to the upper floor.

There's also an intermediate floor between the lower and upper floors. Part of it, accessible via a separate service stair, housed a heating system similar to that in the Winter Palace.
Heating is usually found in thermal buildings such as the Large Baths and the Small Baths. The Greek Library is an exception, and it was heated because the emperor resided there also in wintertime, as he did in the Winter Palace, which also had an heating system.

The Greek Library was paved in opus sectile, thus belonging to the noble and imperial quarters of the Villa, but very few fragments of the colored marble slabs remain. Room BG10, which connects the two large cross-vaulted halls, has a beautiful polychrome mosaic of rectangular tesserae arranged in a basket weave.

On the ceilings, in the most sheltered areas, fragments of frescoes with traces of color can still be seen. The unrestored sections of the walls bear the marks of the clamps for the marble cladding that once covered them entirely.

In the absence of excavation data, it is difficult to understand the function of the two Libraries. Like their name, their intended use as a Library is entirely fanciful, since the niches in the two main halls were not suitable for holding books, and in any case, there are no traces of shelving.

The same applies to the Latin Library and the Hall of the Philosophers, which has high, inaccessible niches, completely unsuitable for holding books, as was thought in past centuries.

Some scholars believe that the Greek and Latin Libraries may have served as summer triclinia, given their north-facing orientation, but there are no traces of masonry stibadia, the triclinium beds, like those we see in the Canopus or in the Summer Triclinium of the Imperial Palace.
The Libraries probably were two monumental atriums, a sort of Propylaea, leading to the private part of the Villa, which was accessed via obligatory and guarded passages.

You can read this and much more in Marina De Franceschini's book «Villa Adriana. Architettura Celeste. I Segreti dei Solstizi» and in the other books «Villa Adriana. Mosaici, pavimenti, edifici, Roma 1991» (pp. 78-82 and 380-385) and «Villa Adriana. Accademia. Hadrian's Secret Garden, vol. I. History of the excavations, Ancient sources and Antiquarian Studies, from the 15th to the 17th Centuries, Pisa Rome 2016».

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