Villa d'Este site features

The ground falls away more than 45 metres from the villa's terrace to the fishponds at the bottom, and the whole garden is an answer to that drop. It is laid out on one long axis down the slope with five cross-axes over it, divided into compartments 30 metres across. Water does all the work and arrives without a single pump: the Aniene was diverted a kilometre through the town, and 200 metres of pipe were buried under the artificial mountain at the top to carry it to the rest.

The villa

You come in now at the top, from Piazza Trento beside the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, through a door of 1521 that predates the cardinal. That is backwards from how it was meant to work -- his guests arrived at the bottom and climbed. Inside, the courtyard sits on the footprint of the Benedictine cloister the villa replaced, with the Fountain of Venus at its centre: two Doric columns, a fourth-century marble bust of Constantine on top, and a Roman sleeping Venus of the fourth or fifth century above a white marble labrum with two lion heads.

The rooms below the cardinal's apartment are reached by a ceremonial stair from the courtyard and strung along one narrow corridor with a high vault, lit from openings to the courtyard above. The corridor ceiling is mosaic -- a painted pergola with coloured birds in it, so that walking the corridor feels like being outdoors. Three rustic fountains are set into its wall, each a miniature grotto with columns and a pediment.

The garden

Between villa and garden runs the Vialone, a terrace 200 metres long, closed at one end by the Fountain of Europa and at the other by a loggia built as a triumphal arch. Below it the Cardinal's Walk runs the full width of the slope against the retaining wall, passing grotto after grotto cut into it.

The set pieces are arranged so that each ends a view. The Oval Fountain is a water theatre: a stone basin against a semicircular wall cascades into the pool while jets fan from vases in the niches behind, and above it an artificial mountain is pierced by three grottoes, each pouring. Opposite it, 300 spouts run the length of the Hundred Fountains on three stacked canals -- fleurs-de-lis alternating with eagles, each throwing a fan of water. You can walk behind the falling water through the arcade of the nymphaeum. The Fountain of the Dragons holds the centre of the whole perspective, and the stairs below it drop through woods to three rectangular fishponds at the lowest point, with the water organ at one end of them.

The Oval Fountain

Begun in 1565 and finished in 1570 to Pirro Ligorio's design, built by the fountain engineers Tomasso de Como and Curzio Maccarono with sculpture by Raffaello Sangallo. Water sheets off a massive stone basin against a semicircular wall, jets rise from vases held by Nereids, and more fans out of niches in the wall behind. The artificial mountain above it stands for the Tiburtine landscape, pierced by three pouring grottoes, with Albunea and her son Melicerte by Gillis van den Vliete and the river gods Ercolaneo and Aniene by Giovanni Malanca set among them.

The Hundred Fountains

Built between 1566 and 1577. The name undercounts it: there are nearly three hundred spouts, on three parallel canals stacked one above the other. Along the upper canal the spouts alternate between heraldic fleurs-de-lis and eagles, both from the Este arms, with boats and obelisks between them, every one throwing a fan-shaped jet. The wall behind once carried plaques of scenes from Ovid's Metamorphoses; they decayed early and the wall is now so overgrown that little of what is left can be seen. The canals stand for the aqueducts that supplied Rome.

The Fountain of the Dragons

Raised in 1572 for a visit by Pope Gregory XIII, whose arms carry a dragon, and rushed to completion for the day. It dominates the central perspective of the garden, and was set against the sound of a nearby uccellario of artificial birds.

The Fountain of the Bicchierone

1660-1661, by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Cardinal Rinaldo I d'Este. The basin is a huge shell rising to terrace level with a toothed cup at its centre spraying upward. After the inauguration in May 1661 Bernini had the jet lowered, because it was blocking the view from the Loggia of Pandora above.

The Fountain of Venus, in the courtyard

1568-1569, designed by Raffaelo Sangallo. The only fountain in the villa that still looks the way it was made. A Roman sleeping Venus of the fourth or fifth century sits between two Doric columns under a fourth-century bust of Constantine; the water fell from a vase at her side into a second-century white marble labrum with two lion heads. The gilded stucco relief at the base shows the Este eagles and traces the river's course from Monte Sant'Angelo down to the villa.

The Grotto of Diana

Decorated 1570-1572 by Paolo Calandrino. A large vaulted underground chamber covered wall to ceiling in mosaic -- fish, dragons, dolphins, pelicans, and the eagles and quinces of the Este. The statues went to the Capitoline Museum in the eighteenth century; some of the original sixteenth-century majolica floor tiles are still underfoot.

The Hall of the Fountain

Built between 1565 and 1570, probably under Girolamo Muziano, and used to receive guests who had just climbed the garden. A wall fountain finished in 1568 by Paolo Calandrino covers the end of the room in coloured ceramic, glass, seashell and stone, crowned by the white Este eagle, its basin resting on two stone dolphins. The ceiling fresco of the Synod of the Gods is modelled on Raphael's Loggia of Psyche at the Villa Farnesina.

The water organ

Hydraulic, like everything else here, and silent for many years before restoration. It stands at one end of the three fishponds at the foot of the garden and plays again for visitors.