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Italian Renaissance Gardens A Day Trip from Rome I INHERITED A LOVE FOR ITALIANATE GARDENS from my great-aunt Emily Roosevelt, whose garden at Gippy Plantation, in Berkeley County, South Carolina, had all the elements of an Italian garden. Emily had traveled in Italy and brought back graceful urns and dignified marble statues of Mercury, Diana, and Venus. With these ornaments she created the perfect Italian garden. Her long paths of crushed seashells ended with a focal point, usually a statue that stopped and captured the eye. Her pergolas provided seating nooks. Her watercourses, pools, and fountains brought the sounds of water into the midst of the garden. Five Italian gardens, each a day trip from Rome, epitomize the Italian style. In describing each the focus will be on two key features: the lay of the hilly land and how the architect used this to create a garden; and how architectural ornaments, including staircases, balustrades, gates, fountains, urns, and buildings, are used to focus the eye, define space, and create a gray and green palette for the year-round garden. Villa Lante dates to the 1560s, when Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara hired architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola to create this Renaissance garden. The garden is entered through twin villas that were used as summer entertainment pavilions for the popes. Vignola used a variety of techniques to create a geometric garden within an ascending rectangular space. This classic Italianate garden is organized on four different levels along a main axis with a sequence of fountains on each level. The fountains were completed by Carlo Maderno in 1612. The garden has perfect symmetry. At the entry there are the twin villas overlooking twelve geometric parterres, eight of which are filled with clipped boxwood, and four of which are blue reflecting pools. Statues of four naked men form the central fountain holding aloft the cardinal’s insignia. From here the garden ascends through three levels of cascading water fountains to a grotto. Descending from the grotto, the first fountain is the fountain of the deluge. Here the water is gurgling, singing, and pounding. We smelled the pungent scent of boxwood, ilex, and laurel. Another level down is the fountain of the dolphins, an octagonal fountain representing the water of the sea. White water cascades down a precipitous water staircase into the fountain of the giants, representing the two rivers, the Arno and the Tiber. Water is the heart and soul of this garden, and its four blue-water parterres throw back the undimmed azure of the Italian sky. Water explodes from the wilderness represented by grottoes and is transformed and tamed through fountains. This is also a garden of stone and evergreen plants. Huge plane trees, without their leaves in December, form a A Day Trip from Rome 37 lacework of branches against the sky. Each level has a green backdrop of clipped boxwood hedges, backed by azaleas and rhododendron. This is perhaps my favorite Italian garden, and whenever we are near Bagnaia, we stop in to savor its beauty. Sacro Bosco, nine miles from Viterbo and a day trip from Rome, is at Bomarzo. The garden was created by Vicino Orsini beginning in 1552 and is a setting for giant stone beasts. It is a garden of wild imagination. Orsini was steeped in classical mythology, myths that tell of the dark and dangerous side of the world and how the brave slay dragons. This bizarre and dark matter from ancient literature is the source of the monumental stone creations in the thickly forested garden of Sacro Bosco. There are enormous stone sculptures covered with green moss and ferns. Light filters through the bare branches of deciduous trees, giving remarkable clarity to these creatures. Cerberus, the three-headed dog, guards the entrance to Hades. According to legend at least one of the heads was awake all of the time. A small classically designed temple sits elegantly in its glade. A winged dragon is eating a leopard, while a serene, classic lady seems undisturbed nearby. A river god is swathed in moss, and a sensuous nude entices. The monstrous open-mouthed fish is like the whale that swallowed Jonah. The huge grotto into the ground represents crossing the Styx and going into the underground, where Pluto took Persephone. Sacro Bosco is a place of imagination, of myth, of fables, of nymphs, and of fairies. It can excite the fears and imagination of grown-ups as well as children. A river god at Villa...

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