Vicovaro (a town of approximately 4,000 inhabitants in the Aniene valley, Metropolitan City of Rome. 40km east of Rome on the SS5 Tiburtina road toward Avezzano, at 220m altitude in the narrow Aniene gorge between Tivoli and Arsoli) has the most surprising Renaissance architectural monument in the Roman hinterland: the Sant'Antonio tempietto (the small octagonal chapel at the entrance to the Vicovaro historic center, attributed to Donato Bramante, the architect who designed the Tempietto di San Pietro in Montorio in Rome and the Cortile del Belvedere in the Vatican, considered the first Renaissance architect to fully reintegrate the classical architectural language into a new formal system) dated to approximately 1465. The attribution to Bramante (who was only approximately 20-25 years old in 1465, before his move to Milan and Rome) isn't universally accepted in the scholarship, some art historians attribute the Vicovaro tempietto to other architects of the Roman humanist circle, but the specific quality of the octagonal architecture (the carved marble portal, the proportional relationships of the eight-sided plan, the classical detail of the pilasters and the entablature) is clearly above the provincial level and belongs to the specific Roman-humanist architectural culture of the mid-15th century.
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Vicovaro: The Tempietto and the Valley
The Sant'Antonio Tempietto
The Sant'Antonio tempietto (at the entry to the Vicovaro historic center, the small octagonal chapel with its carved white marble portal and its terracotta tiles, the plan of an eight-sided centrally-organized space that the Renaissance identified with the classical martyrium type, the building format used for sacred commemorative spaces) is accessible from the exterior at all times (the exterior, including the portal carving, is the primary monument). The interior is accessible when the chapel is open (morning hours and during local celebrations). The portal carving (the marble archivolt with the specific late-Gothic/early-Renaissance decorative vocabulary, the transition between the Gothic scroll tradition and the classical vocabulary that characterizes Italian sculpture of the 1460s-70s) is the closest look at the quality of the work: the carving precision and the decorative sophistication aren't those of a provincial workshop.
The Aniene Valley Position
Vicovaro's position in the Aniene valley (the gorge between Tivoli and Subiaco where the road, the railway, and the river share a narrow space between the calcareous cliffs) gives it the specific quality of a town integrated into a dramatic landscape: the hill of the historic center rises directly from the valley floor, the Aniene river flows immediately below, and the Roman railway line passes through the Vicovaro station at the valley bottom. The Horatian connection: Vicovaro is in the specific section of the Aniene valley that Horace traveled on his way from Rome to his Sabine farm at Licenza, the "frigidus Mandela" and the "Digentia" stream of the Odes are landmarks of the valley that Vicovaro sits within.
Q&A: Vicovaro
How do I combine Vicovaro with Tivoli?
Tivoli (15km west of Vicovaro on the SS5, the Villa Adriana and Villa d'Este, both UNESCO) is the natural Vicovaro day-trip combination: morning at the Villa Adriana (the most complete surviving Roman imperial villa, 2-3 hours), midday drive to Vicovaro (20 minutes), the tempietto (45 minutes), and the specific pleasure of being in the same landscape that Hadrian built his villa to enjoy and Horace wrote his Odes to describe. The Tiburtina road from Tivoli to Vicovaro through the Aniene gorge (the specific road section where the calcareous cliffs close in and the gorge narrows, approximately 20 minutes of genuinely dramatic road) is the best single stretch of driving in the Roman hinterland.
Internal Links
- Licenza: La Villa di Orazio 15km da Vicovaro
- Arsoli: Il Castello Massimo 10km da Vicovaro
- Mandela: Il "Frigidus Mandela" di Orazio
- Bramante in Italia: Dal Tempietto alla Cappella Sistina
- Valle dell'Aniene in Primavera: Dal Tivoli a Vicovaro
- Fotografare il Tempietto di Vicovaro
- Treno Roma-Vicovaro: La Ferrovia dell'Aniene
