Villa+Farnese

At the far end of the steep village street of Caprarola is the vast, light-coloured pentagonal Villa Farnese built in the mid-sixteenth century by Cardinal Alessandro II Farnese, who transformed an old fortress into a pleasure palace with adjoining gardens. Among the most famous of the papal power bases, Villa Farnese is huge out of all proportion compared to the tiny village and the unassuming medieval houses along the main road and in the little alleyways. The following picture shows how the villa and its gardens looked in the 1570s when this fresco was painted as an inspiration at Villa Lante. The winter and summer giardini segrete lead off from the winter and summer apartments.



The architect Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola designed the palace and the gardens as symmetrical unit. The gardens are at the back of the palace, and to get there you hays to pass through the building. The absolute symmetry at Villa Farnese is evident if you study a plan. Twin staircases lead up to the entrance. The paved front courtyard was once used by visitors arriving in their horse-drawn carriages, before they were taken to the inner courtyard where they could alight safely inside the palace walls. The spiral staircase is a work of art in its own right, with painted walls and double columns. The decorations are motifs from the lives of the Farnese family. The views across the village and the undulating landscape from the main windows give you some idea of what the family once owned: houses, churches, woodland and farmland. Having passed through the Map Room (Sala del Mappamondo) and the State Rooms, you reach the living quarters — two identical, symmetrical suites, with views across the formal gardens from the master bedrooms. One suite was for the honoured guest the other for the host himself.

Crossing the bridge over the drained moat, you reach the two formal garden One faces north-east, the other south-west — one for summer and one for winter Each is composed of four large quadrangles, divided by paths forming a cross

Alessandro Farnese called this garden his parchetto, or 'little park'. In spring, the ground is covered in violas, anemones and other early flowers. A small house comes into view at the far end; it's like a miniature version of the large palace – a casino. This part of the estate, the Casino Garden, consists of terraced gardens. It was mainly laid out in the first decades of the seventeenth century for Cardinal Odoardo Farnese and was seen as a pleasure garden, hortus delicarium, from the Latin delicium, which means delight or sensual pleasure. It was meant to be a haven, to which the family could retreat to enjoy life in privacy, only a short stroll from the official life at the palace. They also had their own outdoor dining area here. The water comes from an oval-shaped pond where two river gods are resting. It dances and swirls down a beautiful water staircase and glitters just as it does in the gardens of Villa Lante. Water is an integral feature in most gardens in the water-rich Cimini mountains. At the bottom is an oval pond which collects the water, and then jets it high into the air.

On the second terrace are the Whispering Herms, standing in a row with urns on their heads in front of perfectly clipped box hedges, planted in patterns. The herms were created in the early seventeenth century by Pietro Bernini at the request of Girolamo Rainaldi. Odoardo Farnese's will, dating from 1626, mentions that the garden had fifty-five fruit trees in giant urns, myrtle clipped into peacock shapes and ten urns with myrtle forming the coat of arms of the Farnese family. On the stone railings leading up to the top terrace, water comes out of the mouths of dolphins and falls into shells.