‼️ VILLA ADRIANA - THE HALL OF THE PHILOSOPHERS OR HALL OF THE THRONE

✅ The double porch of the Pecile ends with a curved wall from which two stairs go up to one of the most imposing rooms of the Villa, the Hall of the Philosophers (or Sala dei Filosofi). It is a large rectangular room with an apse at one end, with seven niches for statues.

✅ The name Hall of the Philosophers is invented: maybe in the niches there were the statues of the Seven Sages of Greece. According to other scholars it was a Library, and the manuscripts were kept in the niches, not a very practical arrangement.

✅ The walls were completely covered with precious marble slabs, of which nothing remains; the bricks above the niches were stolen in Medieval times to reuse them in the buildings of Tivoli.

✅ The pavement was in opus sectile with slabs of precious red porphyry, described by Pirro Ligorio in the Sixteenth century. The red porphyry with its purple color symbolized the imperial power, as the purple of the togas of the Roman senators.

✅ Therefore the Hall of the Philosophers had an imperial function: probably it was the Throne Room, where the Emperor gave audience when he was in the Villa. In the niches there could be the statues of divinities or of members of the Imperial House.

✅ Of the doors of the Hall of the Philosophers gave access the Maritime Theater, which was a miniature Villa reserved for the emperor Hadrian himself.

‼️ The Throne Room of Villa Adriana