Art springs to life in gardens near Rome
ITALY
Renaissance artistry blooms at Villa Lante, Bomarzo, Ninfa and other elaborate landscapes just a drive away from the Vatican.
BAGNAIA, ITALY — Iknow how to get to paradise -- in this life, anyway.
It lies atop a hill about 60 miles north of Rome where a gentleman-cardinal built a garden in the 16th century. His architects created it from water and stone, green leaves and vine. But the result is more than the sum of its parts. Villa Lante embodies the humanist ideals of the Italian Renaissance.
In a way, all gardens, from the lowliest patch of zinnias to a sophisticated jewel of landscape design such as Villa Lante, are postage stamps from Eden. So it is no wonder that soon after I moved to Rome last spring, I began seeking them out.
Italy's gardens: An article in Sunday's Travel section on gardens near Rome misidentified a plant used in the clipped globes of the Orange Garden at La Landriana near Anzio, Italy, as crepe myrtle. The globes contain cape myrtle, or African boxwood.
Italian gardens: An article in last week's section on gardens near Rome misidentified a plant used in the clipped globes of the Orange Garden at La Landriana near Anzio, Italy, as crepe myrtle. The globes are cape myrtle, or African boxwood.
I took a Vatican Gardens tour to see the pope's beautiful backyard and saw the ingenious fountains at the Villa d'Este about 20 miles east of Rome. I found secret havens in the city -- the rose garden on the Aventine Hill, for one -- and tagged along with a group of architecture students from Yale University to visit Villa Madama, in the hills northwest of town. While the students sketched its elephant fountain, their professors told me about other gardens in the region of Lazio around Rome that attest to the evolution of garden art in Italy. Many are attached to country villas where counts and cardinals took refuge from the summer heat.
When that heat settled in, I fled the city almost every weekend, navigating my rental car to the Grande Raccordo Annulare, the ring road that encircles Rome. From there it was easy to find cool, green, consummately beautiful pieces of paradise.
Bomarzo and Villa Lante
In 1578, Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Gambara was suffering an attack of gout when Pope Gregory XIII arrived at the Villa Lante. When the pope saw Gambara's exquisite but obviously costly estate above the hamlet of Bagnaia, he canceled the cardinal's allowance.
It couldn't have been a good day for Gambara, but when I visited Villa Lante I was blessed in every way. On the drive from Rome I followed the path of the Tiber River, lined by fields of golden, just-reaped summer hay.
I turned off the highway near Orte into a landscape of volcanic hills, crater lakes and strange, eroded canyons. A winding country road took me to L'Ombricolo -- which means "the little shady spot" -- a bed-and-breakfast inn that occupies a tile-roofed farmhouse, surrounded by sunflowers.
