In the second century, the Roman Empire was at its peak of power and reached its imperial golden age. Hadrian, as one of the Five Virtuous Emperors, adopted a completely different ruling style from his predecessors. During his more than 20 years of ruling, Hadrian spent half of his time in inspection tours to various provinces. This novel way of governance has attracted the attention and discussion of a large number of biographers since the classical era, and has become an important reference for modern historians to study the early Roman provincial governance. Although many historical documents attribute Hadrian’s trips to the provinces to his personal character, the restoration of the governance details in the documents, such as strengthening border defense, quelling local conflicts, cracking down on lax military discipline, and giving various favors to the visited areas, confirms some assumptions of modern scholars about Hadrian’s provincial inspections to a certain extent. The emperor’s provincial inspections strengthened the communication between local and imperial governments, which made a new mode of local governance. In addition, the narrative of classical writers with obvious stand tendency also reveals the struggles and contradictions between the Roman emperors and the imperial elders from the perspective of historical materials.