Dome

Side view depicting columns and base; Tivoli is an Italian hill town, 37 km east of Rome, set above the cascades of the River Aniene. As Tibur, it was a favourite retreat of wealthy Romans escaping the summer heat. Villas were built there, the most famous being that of the emperor Hadrian. Two important 2nd-century BCE temples survive on the acropolis: a tetrastyle pseudo-peripteral Ionic temple and a circular peripteral structure, the so-called Temple of Vesta, 14.25 m in diameter, raised on a high podium, with a cella of opus incertum surrounded by 18 Corinthian columns. The capitals, of the Italo-Corinthian type, have two rings of lush acanthus leaves from which spring corkscrew volutes and a large flower (imitated by Sir John Soane in the Tivoli Corner of the Bank of England, London, 1805). The rectangular and circular temples have been associated with Tiburnus and Albunea (the Tiburtine Sibyl) respectively on the basis of literary sources (e.g. Horace: Odes I.vii.12), which record that they were worshipped near a waterfall beside the acropolis. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.oxfordartonline.com/ (accessed 7/13/2008)