The cult of Hercules Victor

When the Gotis of Totila conquered Tivoli in the VI century A.D. the definitive abandonment of the sanctuary (partly already decadent) began because of the scarce maintenance which was too expensive. With time it was forgotten that it was a sacred building and it was retained by Pirro Ligorio to be the Villa of August but above all Maecenas's Villa so that the whole area (including the little falls and the paper mill installed there) begot the denomination of "Maecenas". The truth is that neither August, nor Maecenas had ever had a Villa at Tivoli. It was only in 1848 Nibby re-established the original denomination but only to the roman ruins found inside the city.
In 978 the Tecta street ("Via Tecta") is in a document called Dark Door; in the Middle Ages, the complex of Hercules the Victor was shared among religious, private owners and the commune of Tivoli.

The "Via Tecta"

In 1227 among the ruins we find the church of S.Maria del Passo of the Franciscan Monks and adjacent to that S.Giovanni in Votano of the Clarisses (these were the owners until 1571).
In the XVI century there is an increase of private owners who enhanced it with embankments, vineyards and gardens.
After some failures by the tenants it was handed over in 1846 to a workmanship with iron under the management of the Roman Society of Mines.
In 1884 the Society of the Hydraulic Strengths bought it for the sake of making money, being that it had already owned the northern part of Tivoli, enriched by the water channels that came from the Aniene.

From that moment the sanctuary was completely changed and divided in two halves by the Channel Canevari (1885-86), projected to pick up all the waters of the channels diverted along the northern part and then conveyed to the power plant called "Acquoria". On the 26th of August 1886 Tivoli was the first Italian city to be illuminated by electric energy. In 1887 the Society of the Hydraulic Strengths became associates with the Society Anglo-Roman to give electricity to Rome.
In a second time the paper mill of Maecenas was placed in a part of the building, up until the fifties when the State property retook claim of the whole complex.