STAGE PLAY PREMIERES TONIGHT AT HADRIAN'S VILLA CANOPUS POOL

ON July 23 and 24, 2026, at 9:00 p.m., the Canopus Reflecting Pool Arena at Hadrian's Villa Adriana in Tivoli will host "Memoirs of Hadrian," a play based on the novel of the same name by Marguerite Yourcenar, starring Alessandro Preziosi as the Roman emperor and directed by him.

The play also features Elisa Di Eusanio, with set design by Alfredo Pirri, costumes by Alessandro Lai, and music by Giacomo Vezzani. The performance takes place within the archaeological setting of Villa Adriana, where the theater interacts with the spaces of the ancient imperial residence.

The production explores the portrait of Hadrian through the writer's words, following the inner journey of a man caught between his public role as emperor and his search for his own identity. The character brought to life by Yourcenar thus becomes a figure capable of exploring universal themes such as love and death, desire and beauty, destiny, and the precariousness of power.

The text recounts the imaginary encounter between the writer and her literary creation, Emperor Hadrian, imagined in the final moments of his life on the shores of the Mediterranean as he confronts the approach of death. Through theatrical language, the production reconstructs the dialogue between memory and the present, bringing to life the reflections of a man who looks back on his own existence and the meaning of his choices.

The production is by PATO srl, in collaboration with the Teatro Stabile d'Abruzzo, with support from the MIC, Villa Adriana, Villa d'Este, and the General Directorate of Museums.

GRIEVING HADRIAN RETURNS TO CANOPUS

CANOPUS was the Egyptian resort where Hadrian and Antinous spent pleasant days away from the hubbub of steamy Alexandria in August and September of the year 130 ... just weeks before tragedy.

In February of 131, grieving Hadrian returned to the resort city of Canopus at the mouth of the western branch of the Nile delta, located 25 miles from Alexandria.  The Imperial court disembarked from the Nile barge and settled into the luxurious port city for a period of rest after the long journey.  

The boat-shaped sarcophagus of Antinous was ceremonially unloaded and carried to the temple of Canopic Osiris.

The city of Canopus was founded by Menelaus, returning from Troy, at the place where his navigator Canopus died and was elevated to the heroic stars.  

Canopus was young and beautiful and was desired by an Egyptian priestess named Theonoe, but he rejected her advances, so she used magic to send a poisonous snake to kill him.

Canopus was the oldest Greek trading port on the Nile, and later became a luxury resort.

Osiris was worshiped in the temple in the form of a pot-shaped image that may have held sacred Nile water, from which the term Canopic jars was taken.

Hadrian later built the famous Canopus area of his Villa in memory of his somber return to the city of Canopus, the gay navigator, without Antinous who had become the navigator of stars.

ANTINOUS IN CANOPUS EGYPT IN 130 AD THE PLEASURE RESORT THAT HADRIAN WOULD RECREATE AT HIS VILLA

CANOPUS and Heracleion! Where Hadrian and Antinous spent pleasant days away from the hubbub of steamy Alexandria in August and September of the year 130 ... just weeks before tragedy.

Heracleion is a real-life Atlantis which sank off the coast of Egypt nearly 1,200 years ago has now been brought back to the surface with the help of 3-D ... and Antinous and Hadrian visited this city ... before a massive earthquake caused it to sink beneath the waves.

The city of Heracleion, home of the temple where Cleopatra was enthroned, was one of the most important trade centres in the Mediterranean area before it disappeared into what is now the Bay of Aboukir. 

The Imperial entourage visited Alexandria and nearby Canopus in August or September 130 AD. 

It is hard to believe they would have passed by fabled Heracleion without at least a brief stop to pay respects at the famous temple of Hapi the Nile inundation deity ... it was Hapi who helped Antinous perform his first miracle after deification.

Heracleion had been the primary Egyptian port at the mouth of the western arm of the Nile prior to the founding of Alexandria. 

By the time Hadrian and Antinous saw Herakleion the city had been in genteel decline for 300 years but was still an important destination for annual pilgrimages by the Egyptian faithful during the annual inundation of the Nile. 

Nearby Canopus had a reputation as the fun spot of the ancient world, a sort of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo or Club Med where those who could afford it played in the sun (and in the pleasure houses) of what is recorded history's first fun-in-the-sun resort.

Canopus was a welcome change from Alexandria, where Christians and Jews waged bloody street battles and where the snooty Greco-Egyptian social classes looked down on the upstart Romans and gossiped viciously behind their backs ... "but not too far behind their backs," as Antinous authority Royston Lambert notes.

"Hurt and resentful," Lambert writes in "Beloved and God," "Hadrian and his circle may in late August have removed themselves from the intense and captious city along the canal to the elegant and relaxed pleasure resort of Canopus with its elegant villas, its vine-threaded arches straddling the water to shade its revellers and its splendid Serapeam."

Lambert points out that "it was delicious Canopus and not mocking Alexandria" that Hadrian used as the motif in a special "resort-theme" area in his villa at Tibur.

In Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Hadrian's Memoirs," it is at Canopus that Hadrian (increasingly obsessed with omens and astrological prognostications as his health fails) consults a "heka" (Egyptian magic) mistress and asks the old witch if there is any way to extend his lifespan.

Antinous' beloved tame falcon is sacrificed and its ka is added to the many kas of the emperor's in what the witch says is a guaranteed way to prolong Hadrian's longevity. 

An even more sure-fire way would be for a human being to sacrifice his life in love and total devotion to the emperor.

But human sacrifice had been banned by Hadrian's predecessor Tiberius and Hadrian was known to oppose such practices.

So Hadrian and Antinous return to Alexandria and Hadrian considers the matter closed. Only later does he learn that Antinous secretly goes back to Canopus. 

"He paid another visit to the sorceress," Hadrian writes in his memoirs.

Only a few pages later, with the Nile flood lagging and with Hadrian's health flagging, Antinous makes a burnt sacrifice of a lock of his hair at an Egyptian temple on the banks of the Nile opposite Hermopolis.

Then he sheds his clothes and folds them neatly on the bank ... and walks out into the Nile....

ANTINOUS IN CANOPUS EGYPT IN 130 AD THE PLEASURE RESORT THAT HADRIAN WOULD RECREATE AT HIS VILLA

CANOPUS and Heracleion! Where Hadrian and Antinous spent pleasant days away from the hubbub of steamy Alexandria in August and September of the year 130 ... just weeks before tragedy.

Heracleion is a real-life Atlantis which sank off the coast of Egypt nearly 1,200 years ago has now been brought back to the surface with the help of 3-D ... and Antinous and Hadrian visited this city ... before a massive earthquake caused it to sink beneath the waves.

The city of Heracleion, home of the temple where Cleopatra was enthroned, was one of the most important trade centres in the Mediterranean area before it disappeared into what is now the Bay of Aboukir. 

The Imperial entourage visited Alexandria and nearby Canopus in August or September 130 AD. 

It is hard to believe they would have passed by fabled Heracleion without at least a brief stop to pay respects at the famous temple of Hapi the Nile inundation deity ... it was Hapi who helped Antinous perform his first miracle after deification.

Heracleion had been the primary Egyptian port at the mouth of the western arm of the Nile prior to the founding of Alexandria. 

By the time Hadrian and Antinous saw Herakleion the city had been in genteel decline for 300 years but was still an important destination for annual pilgrimages by the Egyptian faithful during the annual inundation of the Nile. 

Nearby Canopus had a reputation as the fun spot of the ancient world, a sort of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo or Club Med where those who could afford it played in the sun (and in the pleasure houses) of what is recorded history's first fun-in-the-sun resort.

Canopus was a welcome change from Alexandria, where Christians and Jews waged bloody street battles and where the snooty Greco-Egyptian social classes looked down on the upstart Romans and gossiped viciously behind their backs ... "but not too far behind their backs," as Antinous authority Royston Lambert notes.

"Hurt and resentful," Lambert writes in "Beloved and God," "Hadrian and his circle may in late August have removed themselves from the intense and captious city along the canal to the elegant and relaxed pleasure resort of Canopus with its elegant villas, its vine-threaded arches straddling the water to shade its revellers and its splendid Serapeam."

Lambert points out that "it was delicious Canopus and not mocking Alexandria" that Hadrian used as the motif in a special "resort-theme" area in his villa at Tibur.

In Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Hadrian's Memoirs," it is at Canopus that Hadrian (increasingly obsessed with omens and astrological prognostications as his health fails) consults a "heka" (Egyptian magic) mistress and asks the old witch if there is any way to extend his lifespan.

Antinous' beloved tame falcon is sacrificed and its ka is added to the many kas of the emperor's in what the witch says is a guaranteed way to prolong Hadrian's longevity. 

An even more sure-fire way would be for a human being to sacrifice his life in love and total devotion to the emperor.

But human sacrifice had been banned by Hadrian's predecessor Tiberius and Hadrian was known to oppose such practices.

So Hadrian and Antinous return to Alexandria and Hadrian considers the matter closed. Only later does he learn that Antinous secretly goes back to Canopus. 

"He paid another visit to the sorceress," Hadrian writes in his memoirs.

Only a few pages later, with the Nile flood lagging and with Hadrian's health flagging, Antinous makes a burnt sacrifice of a lock of his hair at an Egyptian temple on the banks of the Nile opposite Hermopolis.

Then he sheds his clothes and folds them neatly on the bank ... and walks out into the Nile....

HADRIAN VILLA'S SECRET SERAPEUM OPEN TO THE PUBLIC FOR THE FIRST TIME

A secret labyrinth of chambers at the end of the Canopus pool at Hadrian's Villa are now open to the public for the first time in decades.

The chambers within the Serapeum pavilion structure had been off-limits for security reasons. No doubt they were also off-limits to visitor in ancient times and accessible only to Emperor Hadrian and perhaps his closest coterie of hangers-on.

The colossal exedra pavilion's labyrinth of rooms (even the imperial lavatory latrine of Hadrian) lead off from the Cyclopean hall of Hadrian's triclinium dining area at the end of the Canopus pool. 

Now, for the first time, tourists can follow in the Emperor's footsteps along mosaic flooring and walls still displaying traces of plaster frescoes and holes in the walls where fittings once held marble cladding in brilliant colors from all parts of the Empire. 

Visitors pass by niches decorated to look like grottoes framed by statues. 

And everywhere there is water ... befitting the Egyptian river-seaside resort of Canopus where Hadrian and Antinous spent many hours in late 130 AD.

That was during their fateful tour of Egypt. They escaped the heat and political turmoil of Alexandria with its rival groups of Jews, Christians and political rabble-rousers, and sought peace and quiet at Canopus.

It was their last pleasurable time before Antinous mysteriously drowned in the Nile in October 130 AD.

When Hadrian returned to Rome in 131 AD ... alone and grieving ... he designed the Canopus pool at his Villa to remind himself of those happy times.

The Villa's Serapeum is crisscrossed with canals ... just as irrigation canals crisscrossed Canopus in Egypt. 

The same canals that re-emerged in the area of ​​the triclinium for distinguished guests, visible on the concave facade. Slaves no doubt drew water from them to wash the feet of the guests who settled onto the curvilinear beds.

Meanwhile, spectacular dishes floated their was on miniature ships loaded with every gastronomic delight. 

Water becomes an ideal symbol of aesthetic magnificence, but also of refined hydraulic engineering that all ennobles and makes divine. 

"Entering the Serapeum means having an experience of light and sound," commented art historian Andrea Bruciati. "Water in profusion maximized the color and luminosity of the Serapeum."

"The Serapeum was the five-star restaurant par excellence, the absolute best from the point of view of the culinary landscape, which had to be shown, exposed, lived as an experience."

The scene must be imagined: Hadrian under his canopy of stars, approachable only by guests of higher rank, while the other aristocrats took their places at a distance along the Canopus perimeter.

"The Serapeum becomes the symbolic representation of the emperor as a divine being, according to the cults of ancient Egypt, land known to Hadrian and reverberating throughout the complex of the Serapeum and the Canopus," the art historian points out.

And it is in the waters of the Nile that Antinous died mysteriously. But sadly, Antinous probably never set foot here, and Hadrian gazed into the waters seeing the reflection only of those happy last days he spent with Antinous in Canopus Egypt.

The new tour route offers new scenarios. From the original stairs of the monument, between mosaics and plasters, you can climb to the Belvedere look-out with a splendid view out across the Canopus pool.

"In history a parallel can be grasped with the palace of Versailles of the Sun King Louis XIV," says Bruciati.

Entering the labyrinth of rooms, tunnels, stairwells, is basically like entering the rooms of a god.

"Until now, the Serapeum has always only shown its façade, offering itself a two-dimensional effect," reflects Bruciati. "Now we can see all the depth, its organic nature and complexity."

Hadrian traveled the length and breadth of his Empire, for a few years with Antinous at his side. His Villa is a microcosm of his travels ... and the Canopus Serapeum is the place where he spent his happiest hours with Antinous.

Check out these photos:

ANTINOUS IN CANOPUS AUGUST 130 AD THE PLEASURE RESORT THAT HADRIAN WOULD RECREATE AT HIS VILLA

CANOPUS and Heracleion! Where Hadrian and Antinous spent pleasant days away from the hubbub of steamy Alexandria in August and September of the year 130 ... just weeks before tragedy.

Heracleion is a real-life Atlantis which sank off the coast of Egypt nearly 1,200 years ago has now been brought back to the surface with the help of 3-D ... and Antinous and Hadrian visited this city ... before a massive earthquake caused it to sink beneath the waves.

The city of Heracleion, home of the temple where Cleopatra was enthroned, was one of the most important trade centres in the Mediterranean area before it disappeared into what is now the Bay of Aboukir. 

The Imperial entourage visited Alexandria and nearby Canopus in August or September 130 AD. 

It is hard to believe they would have passed by fabled Heracleion without at least a brief stop to pay respects at the famous temple of Hapi the Nile inundation deity ... it was Hapi who helped Antinous perform his first miracle after deification.

Heracleion had been the primary Egyptian port at the mouth of the western arm of the Nile prior to the founding of Alexandria. 

By the time Hadrian and Antinous saw Herakleion the city had been in genteel decline for 300 years but was still an important destination for annual pilgrimages by the Egyptian faithful during the annual inundation of the Nile. 

Nearby Canopus had a reputation as the fun spot of the ancient world, a sort of Las Vegas or Monte Carlo or Club Med where those who could afford it played in the sun (and in the pleasure houses) of what is recorded history's first fun-in-the-sun resort.

Canopus was a welcome change from Alexandria, where Christians and Jews waged bloody street battles and where the snooty Greco-Egyptian social classes looked down on the upstart Romans and gossiped viciously behind their backs ... "but not too far behind their backs," as Antinous authority Royston Lambert notes.

"Hurt and resentful," Lambert writes in "Beloved and God," "Hadrian and his circle may in late August have removed themselves from the intense and captious city along the canal to the elegant and relaxed pleasure resort of Canopus with its elegant villas, its vine-threaded arches straddling the water to shade its revellers and its splendid Serapeam."

Lambert points out that "it was delicious Canopus and not mocking Alexandria" that Hadrian used as the motif in a special "resort-theme" area in his villa at Tibur.

In Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "Hadrian's Memoirs," it is at Canopus that Hadrian (increasingly obsessed with omens and astrological prognostications as his health fails) consults a "heka" (Egyptian magic) mistress and asks the old witch if there is any way to extend his lifespan.

Antinous' beloved tame falcon is sacrificed and its ka is added to the many kas of the emperor's in what the witch says is a guaranteed way to prolong Hadrian's longevity. 

An even more sure-fire way would be for a human being to sacrifice his life in love and total devotion to the emperor.

But human sacrifice had been banned by Hadrian's predecessor Tiberius and Hadrian was known to oppose such practices.

So Hadrian and Antinous return to Alexandria and Hadrian considers the matter closed. Only later does he learn that Antinous secretly goes back to Canopus. 

"He paid another visit to the sorceress," Hadrian writes in his memoirs.

Only a few pages later, with the Nile flood lagging and with Hadrian's health flagging, Antinous makes a burnt sacrifice of a lock of his hair at an Egyptian temple on the banks of the Nile opposite Hermopolis.

Then he sheds his clothes and folds them neatly on the bank ... and walks out into the Nile....

HADRIAN ALIGNED TEMPLE OF ANTINOUS TO CATCH DAWN RAYS ON THIS DATE

HADRIAN designed the Antinous Mortuary Temple at his Villa outside Rome so that the rays of the rising sun would illuminate the inner sanctum on the Egyptian festival of the Nile Inundation, according to a US research team.

The new findings come on the heels of studies by other researchers showing that Emperor Hadrian, a skilled architect and astronomer/astrologer in his own right, aligned the Pantheon and the observatory at his Villa to the Solstices.

The new findings are the first indicating a celestial configuration for the Mortuary Temple of Antinous at Hadrian's Villa.

Archaeo-astronomers at Ball State University in the United States say the mystery-shrouded temple, called the ANTINOEION, was aligned so that the first rays of the rising sun would illuminate the East Face of the OBELISK OF ANTINOUS, which would then cast a shadow across a monolithic statue of Antinous-Osiris deep in the inner sanctum of the temple.

Using "solar tracking" technology and highly sophisticated 3-D computer imaging, the Ball State experts say that this sunrise configuration only occurs on July 20th each year.

July 20th was when the Egyptians, at that point in their long history, celebrated the annual Inundation of the Nile, the flood waters which brought nutrient-rich sediment down the river to Egypt to ensure bountiful crops for the coming year.

At other points in Egyptian history, that "Egyptian New Year" festival was celebrated on other dates, owing to vagaries of ancient calendars. But according to Roman writer Censorinus, the Egyptian New Year's Day fell on July 20th in the Julian Calendar in 139 AD, which was a heliacal rising of Sirius in Egypt.

The Ball State University findings are all the more interesting because the First Miracle of Antinous, the July after his death in October 130 AD, was the NILE INUNDATION MIRACLEwhich ended a years-long drought which had threatened the entire empire with famine since Egypt was Rome's "breadbasket" for grain and produce.


The Obelisk is now located atop the Pincian Hill in Rome, but it almost certainly originally stood at the Antinoeion within the Hadrian's Villa compound. The plinth for the obelisk is still visible.

The Obelisk is covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs which constitute a prayer of praise for Antinous the God, describing his blessings.

The Egyptian hieroglyphs on the East Face of the Obelisk quote Antinous the God as asking Ra-Herakhte the sun god for blessings on Hadrian, and also asking Hapy, the Nile Inundation deity, to bring about a bountiful inundation on his behalf.

In effect, the rays (or "hands") of the sun god "activate" the Egyptian hieroglyphs, bringing this divine prayer to religio-magical life, as the shadow of the Obelisk covers the statue of Antinous-Osiris, master of death and transfiguration.

The Ball State University findings have yet to be verified independently, and the researchers said further studies are underway.

It is possible, of course, that the date July 20th had another significance of a more personal nature involving Hadrian and Antinous. 

On the final leg of a three-year tour of the Eastern Empire, Hadrian and his Imperial entourage arrived in Egypt in the summer of the year 130 AD. 

It is known that Hadrian and Antinous spent time in Alexandria, as well as in the coastal resort of Canopus. And they also slew a man-eating lion in Egypt in the summer of 130 AD.

So July 20th could refer to one of those events. It could, of course, also refer to something of a more intimate nature between the two men which transpired on that date.

Perhaps Hadrian and Antinous took part in celebrations for the Nile Inundation on July 20th of 130 AD in Egypt at which drought-weary Egyptians looked to Emperor Hadrian, as their pharaoh, to provide a miracle. 

Ancient writers speculated that Antinous may have been eager to find a religio-magical way to help his beloved Hadrian, possibly sacrificing his life in return for blessings on the Emperor.

Whatever the date may signify, we know that, barely three months later, Antinous drowned in the Nile, and that grief-stricken Hadrian proclaimed him a God, the last Classical Deity before the Fall of Rome.
 
He died under mysterious circumstances, with Hadrian saying only that he "fell into the Nile." The Inundation Deity Hapy ensured that the Nile overflowed its banks generously the following July 20th.

A walk-through of the Ball State University computer model of the Antinoeion and explanation of the July 20th solar alignment is provided in this YouTube video:

NOW YOU CAN SEE LOST TREASURES THAT ANTINOUS MAY HAVE SEEN

A stunning new exhibition at the British Museum will enable you to see some colossal statues and other treasures that Antinous saw in coastal Egypt ... before they vanished beneath the sea in quake-spawned tsunamis. 

Some 300 outstanding objects will be brought together in the blockbuster exhibition SUNKEN CITIES which opens 19 May 2016 at the British Museum in London and which ends on 27 November 2016 ... the birthday of Antinous.

The exhibition features objects from the British Museum's own collection plus spectacular artefacts brought to the surface over the past 20 years by marine archaeologist Franck Goddio off the coast of Alexandria and also at two nearby cities famed as resorts in ancient times.

Vanished beneath the Mediterranean for 1,000 years, the fabled "Lost Cities" of Canopus and HERAKLEION (Heracleion) once lay at the mouth of the Nile. 

Goddio and his divers found those lost cities in 2000.

It is intriguing to think that Antinous may have gazed on those treasures when he and Hadrian visited Egypt in 130 AD.

Since first discovering the Alexandria treasures, Monsieur Goddio has gone on to trawl the waters a few kilometres east of Alexandria in hopes of discovering

Goddio's exhibition of "Egypt's Sunken Treasures" has traveled the world and the British Museum is supplementing the show with a selection of its own objects.

The exhibition also showcases ongoing research ... the most recently excavated objects were found only in 2012!

The discoveries are transforming our understanding of the ancient civilizations of Greece and Egypt.

It brings many objects to Britain for the first time, including statues and jewelry.

The exhibition is the first public viewing of newly discovered Canopus/Herakleion treasures since the two cities vanished below the waves in a series of floods and earthquakes, finally disappearing completely in the late 7th Century AD.

By that time, Egyptian priests had retreated to Canopus/Herakleion and advancing Muslims were sweeping across the land. Thus the exhibition offers a sort of time capsule of the waning days of paganism when the "barbarians" literally stood at the gates.

There are many statues, mostly fragmentary ones minus heads and limbs. 

But by far the most impressive statues are three virtually intact monumental figures of Isis, Amun and the Nile inundation deity Hapi which stand 5.5 meters (nearly 20 feet) tall.

The figure on the right of Hapi is particularly remarkable because it is the world's only large and intact statue of this hermaphrodite deity.

Two modern-day priests of Antinous saw this statue of Hapi in all its magnificence at an exhibition in Germany in 2007 where the two priests placed flowers at the base of the statue and said prayers. 

Hapi, with narrow male hips and strong thighs, but with pendulous female breasts, with long Isis-like hair, but with a chinbeard and with a tall headdress of lotus and papyrus plants on his/her head, holds forth a sacrificial platter.

Presumably, the ancient priests would heap foodstuffs onto that platter on a daily basis, or at least on special feast days ... just as the two modern-day priests did before the statue at the exhibition in Germany.

When Antinous and Hadrian were there, the Nile had failed to flood sufficiently in the summer of the year 130 and there were great concerns that Egypt, the "bread basket" of the Roman empire, would not be able to supply enough food for the coming season.

That makes this particular statue of Hapi even more significant. Throughout Egypt, throughout the empire, all eyes were on Hadrian to intercede with Hapi to avert famine and hunger-induced rioting.

These three statues flanked the portals of the main temple in Herakleion and Hadrian and Antinous must have seen this magnificent statue of the Nile flood deity Hapi ... the first miracle attributed to Antinous after his deification only a few months later was the end of the drought with the help of Hapi.

Was there a link between the looming flood disaster and Hadrian's flagging powers? As Lambert writes: "The link, if any, was in Antinous' mind."