The “Tempio della Tosse” is a well-known, very well-preserved late-antique building, state-owned, designed and described since the Renaissance (P. Ligorio, G. da Sangallo, S. Peruzzi), located downstream from the historic center of Tivoli, along Via degli Orti
at the exit of the Clivus Tiburtinus.
It is juxtaposed against the south side of the road and stands out, with its mighty domed-covered mole, in a historic landscape of vegetable gardens and orchards.
The rotunda has the outer ring interrupted by two straight elevations, in each of which an entrance opens.
The one facing the street, the main one, has a marble threshold and lintel; the entrance on the opposite side, however, is arched.
The airy circular room is divided into two orders. Four apsidioles are located in the spaces in between.
The upper order is windowed: seven large, low arched windows open inside as many niches carved into the thick curvilinear wall.
The masonry technique and architecture point the dating toward the 4th-early 5th century.
Various hypotheses have been put forward as to its destination, although the most widely accepted is the one that sees it as a monumental vestibule, erected in a large villa of the 1st century BCE.
In the Middle Ages the building was converted into a church, of whose decoration the frescoes in the basins of the northwest and southwest apsidioles survive, depicting respectively a bust of Christ within a clypeus supported by angels and a Christ inserted in a mandorla also supported by angels, possibly an Ascension.
Ready to go? Here you can find everything you need.
Easily find all the tourist sites to visit in Tivoli
