PARTERRES ON TERRACE, VILLA BELRESPIRO (PAMPHILY-DORIA), ROME
One of the most charming of the smaller Roman villas lies outside the Porta Salaria, a mile or two beyond the Villa Albani. This is the country-seat of Prince Don Lodovico Chigi. In many respects it recalls the Sienese type of villa. At the entrance, the highroad is enlarged into a semicircle, backed by a wall with busts; and on the axis of the iron gates one sees first a court flanked by box-gardens, then an open archway running through the centre of the house, and beyond that, the vista of a long walk enclosed in high box-hedges and terminating in another semicircle with statues, backed by an ilex-planted mount. The plan has all the compactness and charm of the Tuscan and Umbrian villas. The level ground about the house is subdivided into eight square box-hedged gardens, four on a side, enclosing symmetrical box-bordered plots. Beyond these are two little groves with statues and benches. The ground falls away in farm-land below this level, leaving only the long central alley which appears to lead to other gardens, but which really ends in the afore-mentioned semicircle, behind which is a similar alley, running at right angles, and leading directly to the fields.
At the other end of Rome lies the only small Roman garden comparable in charm with Prince Chigi’s. This is the Priorato, or Villa of the Knights of Malta, near Santa Sabina, on the Aventine. Piranesi, in 1765, remodelled and decorated the old chapel adjoining the house; and it is said that he also laid out the garden. If he did so, it shows how late the tradition of the Renaissance garden lingered in Italy; for there is no trace of romantic influences in the Priorato. The grounds are small, for the house stands on a steep ledge overlooking the Tiber, whence there is a glorious view of St. Peter’s and the Janiculan. The designer of the garden evidently felt that it must be a mere setting to this view; and accordingly he laid out a straight walk, walled with box and laurel and running from the gate to the terrace above the river. The prospect framed in this green tunnel is one of the sights of Rome; and, by a touch peculiarly Italian, the keyhole of the gate has been so placed as to take it in. To the left of the pleached walk lies a small flower-garden, planted with square-cut box-trees, and enclosed in a high wall with niches containing statues: a real “secret garden,” full of sunny cloistered stillness, in restful contrast to the wide prospect below the terrace.
The grounds behind the Palazzo Colonna belong to another type, and are an interesting example of the treatment of a city garden, especially valuable now that so many of the great gardens within the walls of Rome have been destroyed.
The Colonna palace stands at the foot of the Quirinal Hill, and the gardens are built on the steep slope behind it, being entered by a stately gateway from the Via Quirinale. On this upper level there is a charming rectangular box-garden, with flower-plots about a central basin. Thence one descends to two narrow terraces, one beneath the other, planted with box and ilex, and adorned with ancient marbles. Down the centre, starting from the upper garden, there is an elaborate château d’eau of baroque design, with mossy urns and sea-gods, terminating in a basin fringed with ferns; and beneath this central composition the garden ends in a third wide terrace, planted with square-clipped ilexes, which look from above like a level floor of verdure. Graceful stone bridges connect this lowest terrace with the first-floor windows of the palace, which is divided from its garden by a narrow street; and the whole plan is an interesting example of the beauty and variety of effect which may be produced on a small steep piece of ground.
Of the other numerous gardens which once crowned the hills of Rome, but few fragments remain. The Villa Celimontana, or Mattei, on the Cælian, still exists, but its grounds have been so Anglicized that it is interesting chiefly from its site and from its associations with St. Philip Neri, whose seat beneath the giant ilexes is still preserved. The magnificent Villa Ludovisi has vanished, leaving only, amid a network of new streets, the Casino of the Aurora and a few beautiful fragments of architecture incorporated in the courtyard of the ugly Palazzo Margherita; and the equally famous Villa Negroni was swept away to make room for the Piazza delle Terme and the Grand Hôtel. The Villa Sacchetti, on the slope of Monte Mario, is in ruins; in ruins the old hunting-lodge of Cecchignola, in the Campagna, on the way to the Divino Amore. These and many others are gone or going; but at every turn the watchful eye still lights on some lingering fragment of old garden-art—some pillared gateway or fluted vasca or broken statue cowering in its niche—all testifying to what Rome’s crown of gardens must have been, and still full of suggestion to the student of her past.
VIEW FROM LOWER GARDEN, VILLA BELRESPIRO (PAMPHILY-DORIA), ROME
VILLAS NEAR ROME