A three-day conference trip with Active Solution. Half of today was travel, and half was sightseeing in Tivoli, outside of Rome. I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this.

First: lunch, at a very picturesque restaurant in the middle of Tivoli, under a pergola of wisteria.

The restaurant was established sometime in the 18th century and has seen many illustrious guests throughout the years…

… including not one but two visits from Swedish royalty. In 1918, the queen of Sweden was Victoria of Baden. Wikipedia tells me she was sickly, not on good terms with her husband the King of Sweden, and lived the last ten years of her life in Rome.

Look left and you see Roman ruins; look right and you see Renaissance buildings. I wonder what it might feel like to live in a place so steeped in ancient history.

The restaurant was called Sibylla. Tivoli/Tibur was the seat of a sibyl, a prophetess of ancient Greece.

Lunch was followed by a brief visit the Villa Gregoriana, a park centred at the river ravine in the middle of the town. Our time there was so short that I don’t quite understand why we even went there – it wasn’t enough to get a real impression of anything.

Then we went to see the Villa d’Este, where we actually had a good solid hour to walk around.

Villa d’Este is a Renaissance “villa” (read: palace) of Cardinal Ippolito II d’Este. It started out as a monastery, and some of the serene simplicity of that background is still present.

Inside, of course, it’s all opulent frescoes and tapestries. No luxurious furniture, though: later generations were unable to bear the cost of maintaining the palace, and its contents were sold and/or looted, while the palace itself fell into disrepair.

Behind the villa, there’s a large garden. Whole city quarters were razed to make space for it.

The main highlights of the gardens are its numerous fountains, pools, waterfalls and other water features.