Italian Villas and Their Gardens

Behind the fountain, and in a line with it, a horseshoe-shaped amphitheatre has been cut out of the hillside, surrounded by tiers of stone seats adorned with statues in niches a...

“From _Lugane_,” the bishop’s breathless periods begin, “I went to the _Lago Maggiore_, which is a great and noble Lake, it is six and fifty Miles long, and in most places six M...

There is a legend to the effect that Le Nôtre laid out the park of the Villa Pamphily when he came to Rome in 1678; but Percier and Fontaine, who declare that there is nothing t...

Third in date among the early Renaissance gardens comes another, of which few traces are left: that of the Vigna del Papa, or Villa di Papa Giulio, just beyond the Porta del Pop...

Another famous country house, Castellazzo d’Arconate, at Bollate, is even more palatial than the Duke of Modena’s villa at Varese, and, while rather heavy in general outline, ha...

When all has been said in praise of the poetry and charm of the Este gardens, it must be owned that from the architect’s standpoint they are less satisfying than those of the ot...

while Alessi and Montorsoli had to place their country houses on narrow ledges of waterless rock, with a thin coating of soil parched by the wind, and an outlook over the serrie...

Bernini, a Neapolitan by birth, was the greatest Italian architect and sculptor of the seventeenth century. One of his masterpieces in architecture is the church of S. Andrea al...

The purpose of this book is to describe the Italian villa in relation to its grounds, and many villas which have lost their old surroundings must therefore be omitted; but near...

Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations, many of which are in color. See 53495-h.htm or 53495-h.zip: (https://www...

_Châteaux d’eau_ at the Villa Aldobrandini, 152; Villa Borghese, 107; Caprarola, 131; Villa Cicogna, 217; Palazzo Colonna, 119; Villa Conti, 155; Villa d’Este at Tivoli, 144; Vi...