Villa d'Este
Villa d'Este historical timeline
Last updated on October 8, 2026- The d'Este are lords of Ferrara, and build a reputation as patrons of artists and humanist scholars that Ippolito will later spend on this hillside.
- Ippolito II d'Este is born, second son of Alfonso I, Duke of Ferrara, and of Lucrezia Borgia, which makes him a grandson of Pope Alexander VI. As a second son he is directed into the church at once.
- He is named archbishop of Milan at the age of ten.
- Sent to the French court at 27, he becomes an adviser to Francis I and in 1540 joins the king's Private Council. At the king's request Pope Paul III makes him a cardinal at thirty. The appointments leave him one of the wealthiest churchmen of the day, on an income contemporaries put at 120,000 scudi a year, patron of Benvenuto Cellini, Pierluigi da Palestrina and Torquato Tasso -- and permanently in debt.
- His first bid for the papacy, backed by the French king, is blocked by the Habsburg emperor. He withdraws, endorses the Habsburg candidate, and on 3 December is rewarded with the governorship of Tivoli for life. He will stand five times in all and never be elected. The post is what puts this hillside, and jurisdiction over Hadrian's Villa, into his hands.
- He returns to Tivoli in the summer; in September Pope Paul IV accuses him of simony and exiles him, and the project stops before it starts.
- Paul IV having died in 1559, Pius IV rehabilitates him and restores the governorship. Construction begins in July.
- Twelve separate lawsuits are filed against him by Tivoli residents, whose houses, streets and public buildings the site has consumed. The work continues.
- He receives Pope Gregory XIII in the summer, having rushed the dragon fountain through and pawned his silver to pay for the reception. He dies in Rome on 2 December and is buried in a plain tomb in the church beside the villa.
- After thirteen years in the hands of the Cardinal Deacons, who maintain it barely, the villa returns to the family with Cardinal Alessandro d'Este, who overhauls the gardens and persuades Pope Gregory XV to grant the family formal ownership.
- The family can no longer carry the cost of a villa they rarely use and which earns nothing. The long decline begins: the furnishings go to Modena after 1751 and the antique sculpture is sold off to collectors through the eighteenth century.
- The Habsburgs take possession through Maria Beatrice d'Este's marriage to Grand Duke Ferdinand. French soldiers occupy the villa twice and remove much of the decoration still in place.
- Cardinal Gustav von Hohenlohe buys it and, over the next 46 years, restores a dilapidated villa and an overgrown garden that romantic taste has come to prefer that way. Franz Liszt visits repeatedly between 1865 and 1885 and writes three pieces about the place.
- Now owned by the Italian State, the villa begins a major restoration and is refurnished with paintings from the storerooms of the Galleria Nazionale in Rome.
- Bombing destroys most of the painted vault in the entrance foyer. Postwar air pollution degrades many of the walls, and the restoration campaigns that follow are what keep the fountains working.
- Inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Verified against Wikipedia, October 2026.