Hiking: Tivoli to San Polo, 10 miles, 2300 feet, great views

One view from the long ridge between Tivoli and San Polo de' Cavalieri.  The hill town at center is Castel Madama.
We've hired near it too in the past, encountering one of our more brutal brier patches.

As the body ages, long rides on the scooter become less enticing.  And so we've taken to doing some of our hiking from train depots.  On a hot Sunday in early June, we scootered in the a.m. to Piazza Independenza in central Rome, walked 10 minutes to Termini, and caught the train for Tivoli (takes about an hour, less on the return).  Our plan (we've done it twice before) was to hike from the Tivoli train station to San Polo de' Cavalieri, a small hill town roughly 5 miles distant.  10 miles total.  Varied terrain, delightful views.

Monte Cattillo, seen from the Tivoli bar,
with requisite beer, after the hike. 

The hike goes up over the shoulder of Monte Catillo (seen here from a bar after the hike).  The trailhead is about half a mile from the train station: exit the station right, downhill to the roundabout, take the road right, up to the arch, and turn right up the road, where you'll find the marked path around Monte Catillo).  Then uphill through scrub to a lone oak (this much we described in an itinerary in our first book), through a lovely grove of oak trees and onto a long ridge, finally pitching down off the ridge, then up on a road and some other tracks to San Polo, where we ate the tramezzini we had purchased in a Tivoli bar in the morning.

Benches line the right side of the street in San Polo.  

We sat on one of the benches on the town's main street.

Bar Centrale.  Quiet, but open, on a Sunday afternoon. 

Or you could buy lunch at Bar Centrale.











Or, from San Polo, you could go on to Monte Gennaro - another 6 hours or so!  We've climbed Gennaro half a dozen times, from several directions, but never from this one.  Tivoli and San Polo are in the Lucreteli, and Monte Gennaro is the highest mountain outside Rome.  The Tivoli to San Polo hike gives you the flavor of the Lucretili and some small town and farm ambience as well.

The ritorno (return) is a reversal of the andato (no good translation, sort of "going" or "the way there"): down from San Polo, steep climb up a hot road to the ridge, more or less flat journey along the mostly open ridge (great views on both sides, especially left), descent through the oaks, the scrub, and along the shoulder of Monte Catillo and down into Tivoli.

There used to be a lot of cows in these pastures, and bathtubs were used as rural fontane (fountains) to provide the animals with water.

Dianne at the oak grove, on the descent.  Several years ago, during a drought,
we feared the oaks might die.  Today, they appear healthy.  Red and white trail
marker on the tree.  A clear path.

Descent into Tivoli.  The white triangle just below the horizon and about 2/3 of the way toward the
right side of the frame, is Santiago Calatrava's famous, but unfinished and unused, swimming pool.  

A short section of road at the beginning and end of the hike. 

The numbers are hours and minutes estimated to reach the
destination, not distance.

Grateful for the shade. 

The trail is well marked (above, a typical sign) in a way it wasn't some years ago, when we first did the hike.  There are just a couple of places where one can go wrong: on the way to San Polo, having passed the lone pine, bear to the right and slightly upward at the fork (the intersection is marked).



Then, about halfway to San Polo, be careful to avoid pitching downward to the left (that's another trail, and a shorter hike) and stay more or less on the ridge.  There are some lovely and cool shaded stretches.







The total dislivello (elevation gain) is about 2300 feet (total for both directions, which involve ups and downs both ways).  That means this one's for hikers, not walkers.  Lots of rocky paths, so hiking boots are highly recommended.  There's water at the Tivoli train station (look for the eagle fountain at one end) and at the fountain in San Polo's main square--but none on the trail, with one exception that's quite close to San Polo.

Water is available at the eagle fountain on the north end of the Tivoli train station.  
You'll be headed for Monte Catillo, whose top is marked by the cross in the center
of this photo.  You can go to the top or across the shoulder on the way to San Polo..

We described another hike from the Tivoli station to the higher Monte Sterparo in 2016. That blog post includes some photos of our "cow map" that has part of this hike on it as well.

We've been partial to Tivoli for a long time, not only for hiking, but also for just the feel of this small, very old town (dating from the ancient Romans), the magnificent 19th-century Villa Gregoriana (#6 on the RST Top 40) and the more famous 16th century Villa d'Este with its fountains (the wild and the ordered, respectively, were compared in Rome the Second Time).

Bill

"The Monster in the Garden": Luke Morgan Reinterprets Italian Gardens

The "Hellmouth"  - It was also a 16th-century dining room.   Parco dei Mostri, Bomarzo.

The "Hellmouth" of the Parco dei Mostri ("Monster Park") in Bomarzo near Rome seems simply a curious anachronism these days.  But in the 16th century, when the park was created, it projected dread, as well as pleasure.  "Pleasurable dread" or "fear followed by pleasure" is the better way to interpret both the Hellmouth and the other monsters of Italy's once famous early Renaissance parks, according to a new book by Luke Morgan, The Monster in the Garden.

The hellmouth is an ambiguous, hybrid structure, Morgan says.  It was used as an outdoor dining room.  And so, he posits, it's the scene of devouring (nourishment, pleasure) and being devoured (death, dread).  There is, according to this author, a theme of violence in the gardens that has been lost or downplayed by other writers.

Another fine monster in the Parco dei Mostri.

With Morgan's new approach to these parks, you too can re-visit them and enjoy them with fresh insights.  He approaches these "grotesques" or "monsters" as ambivalent or contradictory, rather than the "insipid idea of the garden" that has been the province of modern scholarship.  Morgan essentially reclaims the monster/grotesque as a complex, multi-valent figure, rather than simply "ugliness and horror," as Edmund Wilson described Bomarzo.

Focusing mainly on the "Parco dei Mostri" and Tivoli's Villa d'Este, the book is a trove of ideas for looking at their sculptures.  

Among Italian garden aficionados, it's common knowledge that Tivoli has the Rometta fountain, the personification of Rome, at one end, and Tivoli at the other.  Morgan adds to this interpretation by pointing out it's the metropolis at one end, the spa town at the other, another example of polarities.

The "Rometta fountain."  There are many Rome identifiers, including the Dea Roma (Goddess Rome), top center; the
Lupa with Romulus and Remus, above right; the boat fountain from Piazza di Spagna; and the Obelisk.  Villa d'Este, Tivoli.

"Fountain of Nature" - and what are all those spouts?
Villa d'Este, Tivoli.

A closer look at the...what?
animals? on the Fountain of
Nature.

He also identifies the range of bodily fluids fountains can represent: vomit, sweat, tears. He claims the Villa d'Este's Fountain of Nature - that we've always thought of as the many-breasted woman -  may not have breasts at all.  He says the idea that the fountain's many spouts are breasts may have developed only in the late Renaissance. Whatever she has - nipples, testicles, animals - there are too many, she's excessive, and so she is abnormal, he concludes. 

And he posits, maybe these are not breasts.

The leaning house in Bomarzo: the point between
good and bad.

In Bomarzo, Morgan also has an interesting take on the basic layout of the park.  He says no one is even sure where the entrance was, and so we don't know what the basic walking motif should have been: is it showing a false paradise (the little temple or 'tempietto') leading down into hell, or does the path end at this temple of divine love?  The tempietto in either case, he says, is a state of grace; the house that is distorted and leaning is a turning point between good and bad.  

Bringing up an old example of fake news, Morgan discusses the "false book of antiquities" that argued Viterbo was the cradle of an Etruscan civilization founded by a race of noble giants, surpassing Rome. He notes the park's fake Etruscan tomb that he calls a "deliberate ruin or 'folly' that even has a picturesque (fake) fracture."  In other words, this is a simulated ruin.

A fake Etruscan tomb - this one in Ariccia's Parco Chigi.

Looking for all the concepts Morgan discusses in his book could take one weeks.  Checking out just a few as one visits or re-visits these parks is intriguing, delightful, and good old-fashioned fun.  He has points to make about statuary in Rome as well, such as Bocca della Verita' ("participatory grotesque") and Bernini's Four Rivers Fountain in Piazza Navona (half-invented creatures).  And while he concentrates on Bomarzo and Tivoli, he also references Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, Villa Lante in Bagnaia and Villa Farnese in Caprarola, both in northern Lazio; Sovana in southern Tuscany; and Florence's Medici Sculpture Gardens.

A threatening (and large-spouted) hybrid female in Villa d'Este.

I recommend Morgan's book for the sheer number of concepts he addresses.  In addition to the few mentioned above, others are: grotesqueness and monstrosity; the world as a giant human body (citing Leonardo); the giant or colossal mode; hybrids (usually female, reflecting male anxieties about the sexuality of women); Renaissance representation of more than one time at once; the role of the Fascist reinterpretation of the Italian garden (to privilege man, the rational, and the male).

Another Villa d'Este hybrid;
this one not so threatening.

A hybrid in Villa Sciarra, Rome (think she's a force for good?
 note the skull).  Once you start looking for these creatures,
they seem to be everywhere.

The full title of Morgan's work is The Monster in the Garden:The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design.  I saved writing it out until now because I didn't want to scare away lay people from the book.  Morgan also is deeply steeped in lit-crit and other theories. So you have to wade through references to Debord, Bakhtin, Benjamin, Foucault.  But is it worth it?  In a word, yes.

Another Hellmouth - this one in Villa Aldobrandini, Frascati.

And a fine small restaurant
after viewing all those
 monsters l'Ape 50, in Tivoli.

Luke Morgan, The Monster in the Garden: The Grotesque and the Gigantic in Renaissance Landscape Design, U. Penn. Press, 2016.

Dianne

Tourists enjoying the many spouts.  Villa d'Este.

Required shot of one of the gorgeous Villa d'Este vistas - sans monsters.

Hiking near Rome: Tivoli, Train to Trail

Hard work to get here, but great views.  Tivoli at left.  Colli Albani in the background.

We're hikers, and until now we've used our scooter almost exclusively to get to trailheads outside Rome.  But recently, we've been taking the train to destinations that promised too long a scooter ride--Carsoli among them. Having gotten used to trains, a short while ago we took one to Tivoli for a hike we thought would be ordinary.  It wasn't.

In the morning, trains for Tivoli leave from the station at Tiburtina every 20 minutes or so.  You can purchase round-trip tickets at the station, at kiosks, and in some stations, like Trastevere, at the newsstand.  The train we caught was a milk run--it stopped everywhere--and even then only took an hour and ten minutes to reach the famous hill town.  About 3 Euro each way per person.  Hard to beat that price.

At Tivoli we exited south from track 1 (past the cool eagle fountain), turned right on the street, had a coffee a couple of blocks down at a bar (where we also bought a sandwich for lunch), kept going down to the traffic circle, turned 90 degrees right with Villa Gregoriana on the left (the road to Marcellina), and followed the road--the most dangerous part of the whole exercise (no shoulders)--about 3/4 of a mile, past the bridge and around two other curves to the other side of the gorge.  The road then curves sharply right, goes around still another left curve, and there, on the right side of the road, you'll find the trailhead.  It looks like a small stone driveway that ascends in the direction you're traveling. There should be a sign put up by CAI (Club Alpino Italiano) naming the trail for "Paolo Fantini."  Have a drink of water and begin the climb, following the new, and very frequent, red and white marks on trees and rocks. This may be the best-marked trail we've ever been on.

This section of the map contains the start and finish of the hike.  The train station is very near the "T" in TIVOLI.  The trailhead is just beyond this section of the map, on the blue line (the road), upper left.  If you can get your hands on this map,
- "Riserva naturale Monte Catillo" - it's excellent.  It features, of course, the long-horned white bovine on the cover.

After a brief standoff with us, this long-horned bull
bailed out and took off down the hill.  

Trail "C" (see map below) ascends through a lovely forest of pine and scrub, turns right (east) after about 20 minutes, crosses some more or less open ground, turns a bit toward the northwest, then east again and down into a wooded fosso (a small valley or gulley) where we encountered, and skirted, bulls and horned cows on the trail as well as some "new age" orchestrations, including a set of wind chimes strung near the trail (below).

Wind chimes, upper left/center.

The trail then turns sharply west and, in a few minutes, begins a rather difficult, very rocky traverse/ascent of Monte Sterparo.  You'll use your hands here to climb some of the rocky pitches.  At the end of the ascent there's a lovely spot--a cross, a madonna, and a superb view of Tivoli and the valley in which Rome resides (photo at top of post).  You may see a white sail-shaped structure in the distance; it's an unfinished swimming pool designed by the world-famous architect Calatrava.

This map contains the entire course of the trek (C to F to E to A)

From here you'll take a DIFFERENT trail, just to the north of the one you came up.  Follow it for a minute or two, where it forks.  Take the LEFT fork ("F" on the map), to and through the nondescript actual top of Monte Sterparo (you won't know you've been there, although there's a good pile of stones at one point - not the highest point), and beyond for about 20/30 minutes to Colle Lecinone, where you'll find an abandoned building on your right and a barbed-wire boundary fence for the

Easy walking through nice forest.  Here, the trail markers are all on trees.  

"reserve" on your left.  The trail ("E") turns east and downhill from here, abandons the rocks, enters a sublime forest planted perhaps 60 years ago, and emerges--another 20 minutes later--into an intersection with trail signs galore.  The road to your right goes downhill and spills out at the bridge you walked a couple of hours ago; you can take this if your need to get back is urgent.  Instead, we recommend the trail to the east--the sign says something about a picnic area (i.e., "Area Pic-Nic") - it's still marked "E" on the map.  It goes through the woods, emerges on the east side of the mountain (great views to the East!), traverses the side of the hill for a few minutes, then heads downhill, more or less toward Tivoli.

The center portion of hike, including Monte Sterpara (middle left), up to Colle Lecinone (top left) on the F trail, and across on the E trail to lower right, until it meets up with trail A, which you follow.  

Through the cork oak forest.

And here it gets a little tricky.  As you come downhill and the countryside opens up, it is important that you follow the red and white markers, for there are several unmarked and tempting trails, mostly trampled out by cows and horses, we think.  Descending, you'll enter a divine forest of cork oak trees--the bark is special.

Near the end.  Tivoli center left, Monte Catillo, with
cross, in distance at right

Soon thereafter you'll come upon a lone tree, just to your right.  The correct trail is just to the right of the tree. Follow it, and it will take you down, past an athletic field on your right and around the small but iconic mountain above Tivoli--Monte Catillo, with the cross on its peak--onto a road (turn left, downhill) and then onto the road on which your hike began.  Turn left, and you're about 20 minutes from the train station.

Should you want to ascend Monte Catillo on the way down, you'll find a path on the southeast side of the mountain that will take you to the top, about 10 minutes away.

If you're eager to have a meal on your return, we recommend crossing the bridge at the circle, toward Tivoli proper.  About a hundred yards beyond, on the right, is L'Ape 50°, with tables inside and outside.  The kind and informed waiter explained the name to us (that little 3-wheel truck one sees rarely now, and usually only in the countryside, is called "l'ape" (the bee), and he revealed that travel guru Rick Steves had eaten there and lists the restaurant in one of his travel guides.  We're not Steves fans, but in this case he offers good advice. We especially enjoyed the weekly off-menu artichoke lasagna and the artisanal beers, a specialty of the house.  Keep in mind that L'Ape 50° keeps typical restaurant hours; so it's unlikely to be open between 3 p.m. and 7.30 p.m.

We are fans of the two great gardens of Tivoli - the 16th century Villa d'Este and the 19th century Villa Gregoriana (#6 on RST's Top 40).  You might want to take in one or both of these as well. They are not open on Mondays.

Total ascent, a modest (for true hikers) 1650 feet.  Time: about 4 1/2 hours from and to the Tivoli station.  Hiking boots a must, and at least one hiking pole is highly recommended.  Bring one large bottle of water for each hiker and (assuming there are two of you) a knife to divide the sandwich or cut the cheese. Sometimes we buy a bottle of wine (at a bar, where they'll open it for you and provide plastic cups) to drink on the train, but the ride's a short one, and on this occasion we did not.  Trains back to Rome in the late afternoon and evening run about every hour, and the last one is about 10 p.m.

Bill, with Dianne's help. 

Rome the Second Time features a Tivoli hike and the marvelous duo: villa/gardens of Tivoli - Villa d'Este and Villa Gregoriana.  The hike we did this day incorporates part of RST's hike, which goes up the more famous Monte Catillo with its cross.  The hike described in this post is much more interesting in its terrain and flora, and also more difficult.

At right and beyond the buildings, that's Monte Sterpara, as seen from Villa D'Este, looking rather ordinary from this distance and angle.    

RST Top 40. #6: Villa Gregoriana

If you were in Rome and looking for a fine example of Italian baroque architecture, you would be wise to head for Francesco Borromini's San Carlo alle Quatro Fontane (San Carlo at the Four Fountains), for a look at that lovely, complex facade.

For the quintessence of Fascist monumentalism, you couldn't do better than the EUR (Esposizione Universale di Roma/Universal Rome Exposition) complex, where Italy's overblown imperial ambition is represented in the configuration of space and in almost every building. 



To capture the colorful exuberance of Art Nouveau, there's no place in Rome better than Galleria Sordi, on via del Corso. 

Tivoli, a town in the Alban Hills outside of Rome, has two such quintessential phenomena.  One of them, the Villa d'Este, is famous and a mainstay of area tourism; the other, Villa Gregoriana, is not so well known.  Yet Villa Gregoriana is in the RST Top 40--indeed, the RST Top 10--coming in at #6.  Da non perdere (not to be missed).

Actually, we recommend seeing Villa d'Este and Villa Gregoriana in tandem, because they're so different, separated from each other by almost three centuries (the Villa d'Este was built in the mid-16th century, Villa Gregoriana dates to 1826) and representing distinct ways of looking at nature and the world.  Although both are spectacular attractions, we've favored Villa Gregoriana because the 19th-century romantic perspective that it so perfectly captures--the visual equivalent of the poetry of Keats, Shelley, and Wordsworth--is rare in Rome, especially compared to the neo-classical perspective of the Villa d'Este.

The two villas are central to Itinerary 14 in Rome the Second Time, "Walking and Climbing Amid the Waters of Tivoli," where we provide guidance on how to get to Tivoli and what to take with you.  We also offer our own, non-guide-book interpretation of the contrasting meanings of the two villas:

"Villa d'Este is all about control, order, precision, repetition, and technology; one gets the sense here of human beings making water do tricks, of water engineers engaged in modern, scientific acts of manipulation, of nature bent to human will, to the logic of science. In contrast, Villa Gregoriana is about an apparent lack of control, about the power of water to erode and carve, about singularity rather than repetition, about a ferocious nature barely restrained.  Villa d'Este offers a lesson on the mind, a discourse on reason; Villa Gregoriana provides instructions on the body, on the spirit." 

And there's more. 

Bill