The Villa
d'Este is a villa in Tivoli, near Rome, Italy. Listed as a UNESCO
world heritage site, it is a fine example ofRenaissance
architecture and the Italian
Renaissance garden.
The villa
The villa itself is surrounded on three sides by a sixteenth-century
courtyard sited on the former Benedictine cloister. The fountain on a side
wall, framed within a Doric,
contains a sculpture of a sleeping nymph in a grotto guarded by d'Este heraldic eagles,
with a bas-relief framed in apple boughs that links the villa to the Garden of the Hesperides.
The central main entrance leads to the Appartamento
Vecchio ("Old
Apartment") made for Ippolito d'Este, with its vaulted ceilings frescoed
in secular allegories by Livio Agresti and his students,
centered on the grand Sala, with its spectacular view down the main axis of the
gardens, which fall away in a series of terraces. To the left and right are
suites of rooms, that on the left containing Cardinal Ippolito's's library and
his bedchamber with the chapel beyond, and the private stairs to the lower
apartment, the Appartamento
Nobile, which gives directly onto Pirro Ligorio's Gran Loggia straddling the gravelled terrace with
a triumphal arch motif.
Gardens
The garden plan is laid out on a central axis with subsidiary
cross-axes, refreshed by some five hundred jets in fountains, pools and water
troughs. The water is supplied by the Aniene,
which is partly diverted through the town, a distance of a kilometer, and,
originally, by the Rivellese spring, which supplied a cistern under the villa's
courtyard (now supplied by the Aniene too). The garden is now part of theGrandi
Giardini Italiani.
The Villa's uppermost terrace ends in a balustraded balcony at the left
end, with a sweeping view over the plain below. Symmetrical double flights of
stairs flanking the central axis lead to the next garden terrace, with the Grotto of Diana, richly decorated with
frescoes and pebble mosaic to one side and the central Fontana del Bicchierone ("Fountain of the Great
Cup"), planned by Bernini in 1660, where water issues from a
seemingly natural rock into a scrolling shell-like cup.
To descend to the next level, there are stairs at either end — the
elaborate fountain complex called the Rometta ("the little Rome") is at
the far left — to view the full length of theHundred Fountains on the next level, where the water
jets fill the long rustic trough, and Pirro Ligorio's Fontana dell'Ovato ends the cross-vista. A visitor may
walk behind the water through the rusticated arcade of the concave nymphaeum, which is peopled by marble
nymphas by Giambattista della
Porta. Above the nymphaeum, the sculpture of Pegasus recalls to the visitor the fountain of Hippocrene on Parnassus,
haunt of the Muses.
This terrace is united to the next by the central Fountain of the
Dragons, dominating the central perspective of the gardens, erected for a visit
in 1572 of Pope Gregory XIII whose coat-of-arms features a dragon.
The sound of this fountain was in contrast to a nearby Uccellario with artificial birds. Central stairs lead down a wooded
slope to three rectangular fishponds set on the cross-axis at the lowest point
of the gardens, terminated at the right by the water organ (now brought back
into use) and Fountain of Neptune (belonging to the 20th century restorations).
Absolutely astonishing: Villa D'Este, Tivoli, as seen from a drone (video): http://youtu.be/imHTyHOUHDc via @YouTube
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