How Caprarola was built and evolved over time

The Villa Farnese is the reason Caprarola looks the way it does, and the story of its construction explains its odd character.

It was initially built as a fortress. The town and the surrounding area were a fief of the House of Farnese, and Cardinal Alessandro Farnese the elder began the work in 1530 to a project by Antonio da Sangallo the Younger — a defensive brief rather than a decorative one.

Then it stopped. After only four years the project came to a halt, when the cardinal was elected pope in 1534 under the name Paul III.

What resumed was a different kind of building. In the sixteenth century the Farnese, with a pope of their own and the Duchy of Castro newly constituted, built sumptuous villas and castles across their enlarged dominion, and at Caprarola they raised the residence most representative of that wealth and power — on the fortress's footprint.

The town was shaped to match. The village sits on a tufa spur below the palace, laid out so that the building dominates the surrounding countryside, which is the effect any visitor registers before they register anything else.

The material throughout is the local volcanic stone of the Cimini.