Hadrian's Villa
Hadrian's Villa in Tivoli is the most romantic of classical sites. Set among the hills 28km from Rome, it's where second-century emperor Hadrian sought refuge from his troublesome senate, building himself a hideaway of grottos, towers, piazzas, libraries, meeting rooms, temples and water-sculpted vistas.
The ruins of this monumental complex become even more romantic at night when the day-trippers have gone home and, with a full moon rising over crumbling pillars, you sense the shades of history flocking. At least that's how it felt when I was there for the opening night of the Tivoli Arts Festival. Sitting alongside the towering remains of an ancient grain warehouse I was watching the premiere of Sinfonia per la Taranta, a dance/music collaboration about the traditions of the tarantella which had been created by folk musicologist Ambrogio Sparagna and choreographer Micha Van Hoeke. The villa is an amazing venue for an impressive programme. For if the imperial ghosts were startled by the joyously raucous drumming and singing that accompanied Sinfonia they will have more shocks in store during the rest of the festival which includes Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's brilliant alliance with the Shaolin monks, Sutra; The Book of Longing (Leonard Cohen with Philip Glass) and Wim Vandekeybus' Menske.
The Tivoli festival is only in its second year, which is probably why so few people outside Rome know about it. But also lacking an international profile is the organisation that runs the festival, the Fondazione Musica per Roma. On a mission to revitalise contemporary arts in the Eternal City, the Fondazione has been responsible for a lot of other smartly packaged festivals in and around Rome, with recent events including a philosophy festival and something I never expected to read about in an arts programme - a four-day maths festival, introduced by Umberto Eco. Nor had I heard about the Fondazione recently built arts complex, the Auditorium Parco della Musica, which is a kind of 21st century Barbican, build on Rome's former Olympic games site (note to London) which houses three different concert halls and a 3,800-seat open-air amphitheatre.
All this is very interesting for visitors to Rome given that the city, along with most of Italy, has for a long time appeared to have wandered off the international arts radar. In dance terms, other than the Regia Emillia-based company Aterballetto and its choreographer Mario Bigonzetti, I've seen little from Italy that ranks on an international level. Given that this is a country which claims to have given birth to ballet, it's especially dispiriting that its main classical company La Scala has become a byword for artistic dither and insularity.
Obviously it will take more than a few festivals to galvanise an entire arts scene, but the Fondazione's programme of initiatives makes a start. Not only does it aim to put Italian artists and audiences in a wider dialogue with the outside world, it also encourages a new dialogue with Italy's own traditions. Sinfonia per la Taranta was created out of serious research into the culture of tarantella, which for generations has been hidden under kitsch and folksiness. Even if I didn't share the audience's delighted sense of ownership over all of its material, Sparagna's musical arrangements of centuries-old tunes were pitched between tradition and modernity that I didn't have to be Italian to find exhilarating.
It may be time for cultural tourists to stop thinking of Rome as just a giant museum.
