Gaius Julius Solinus cites
Cato the Elder's lost
Origines for the story that the city of
Tibur was founded by Catillus the Arcadian, a son of
Amphiaraus, who came there having escaped the slaughter at
Thebes, Greece. Catillus and his three sons Tiburtus, Coras, and Catillus drove out the
Siculi from the Aniene plateau and founded a city they named Tibur in honor of Tiburtus. According to another account, Tibur was a colony of
Alba Longa. Historical traces of settlement in the area date back to the thirteenth century BC.
Tibur may share a common root with the river
Tiber and the Latin
praenomen Tiberius. From
Etruscan times Tibur, a
Sabine city, was the seat of the
Tiburtine Sibyl. There are two small temples above the falls, the rotunda traditionally associated with
Vesta and the rectangular one with the Sibyl of Tibur, whom
Varro calls
Albunea, the water nymph who was worshipped on the banks of the Aniene as a tenth Sibyl added to the nine mentioned by the Greek writers. In the nearby woods,
Faunus had a sacred grove. During the
Roman age Tibur maintained a certain importance, being on the way (the
Via Tiburtina, extended as the
Via Valeria) that Romans had to follow to cross the mountain regions of the
Apennines towards the
Abruzzo, the region where lived some of its fiercest enemies such as
Volsci,
Sabines, and
Samnites.
Roman age At first an independent ally of
Rome, Tibur allied itself with the
Gauls in 361 BC. Vestiges remain of its defensive walls of this period, in
opus quadratum. In 338 BC, however, Tibur was defeated and absorbed by the Romans. The city acquired Roman citizenship in 90 BC and became a resort area famed for its beauty and its good water, and was enriched by many
Roman villas. The most famous one, of which the ruins remain, is the
Villa Adriana (
Hadrian's Villa).
Maecenas and
Augustus also had villas at Tibur, and the poet
Horace had a modest villa: he and
Catullus and
Statius all mention Tibur in their poems. In 273,
Zenobia, the captive queen of
Palmyra, was assigned a residence here by the Emperor
Aurelian. The second-century temple of Hercules Victor is being excavated. The present Piazza del Duomo occupies the Roman forum. In 547, in the course of the
Gothic War, the city was fortified by the Byzantine general
Belisarius, but was later destroyed by
Totila's army. After the end of the war it became a Byzantine duchy, later absorbed into the
Patrimony of St. Peter. After Italy was conquered by
Charlemagne, Tivoli was under the authority of a count, representing the emperor.
Roman gentes with origins in Tibur •
Coponia (gens) •
Cossinia (gens) •
Rabiria gens •
Rubellia gens Middle Ages From the tenth century onwards, Tivoli, as an independent commune governed by its elected consuls, was the fiercest rival of Rome in the struggle for the control over the impoverished central Lazio. Emperor
Otto III conquered it in 1001, and Tivoli fell under the
papal control. Tivoli however managed to keep a level of independence until the 15th century: symbols of the city's strength were the Palace of Arengo, the
Torre del Comune and the church of St. Michael, all built in this period, as well as the new line of walls (authorized in 1155), needed to house the increasing population. Reminders of the internal turbulence of communal life are the
tower houses that may be seen in Vicolo dei Ferri, Via di Postera, Via del Seminario and Via del Colle. In the 13th century Rome imposed a tribute on the city, and gave itself the right to appoint a count to govern it in conjunction with the local consuls. In the fourteenth century, Tivoli sided with the
Guelphs and strongly supported
Urban VI against
Antipope Clement VII. King
Ladislaus of Naples was twice repulsed from the city, as was the
condottiero Braccio da Montone. In the city there was also a
Jewish community. , and the Roman amphitheatre
Renaissance During the
Renaissance, popes and cardinals did not limit their embellishment program to Rome; they also erected buildings in Tivoli. In 1461
Pope Pius II built the massive Rocca Pia to control the always restive population, and as a symbol of the permanence of papal temporal power here. From the sixteenth century the city saw further construction of villas. The most famous of these is the
Villa d'Este, a
World Heritage Site, whose construction was started in 1550 by
Pirro Ligorio for Cardinal
Ippolito II d'Este and which was richly decorated with an ambitious program of
frescoes by painters of late Roman Mannerism, such Girolamo Muziano,
Livio Agresti (a member of the "
Forlì painting school") or
Federico Zuccari. In 1527 Tivoli was sacked by bands of the supporters of the
emperor and the
Colonna, important archives being destroyed during the attack. In 1547 it was again occupied, by the
Duke of Alba in a war against
Paul IV, and in 1744 by the
Austrians. In 1835
Pope Gregory XVI added the
Villa Gregoriana, a villa complex pivoting around the Aniene's falls. The "Great Waterfall" was created through a tunnel in the Monte Catillo, to give an outlet to the waters of the Aniene sufficient to preserve the city from inundations like the devastating flood of 1826.
Modern times In 1944, Tivoli suffered heavy damage under an
Allied bombing, which destroyed the
Jesuit Church of Jesus. ==Main sights==