Discover Villa Lante

Villa Lante at Bagnaia, outside Viterbo, is a Mannerist garden of surprise, attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. Its oddity is that there is no single villa: two nearly identical casini stand side by side, built thirty years apart by two unrelated owners, and the garden rather than the house is the composition. It has been state property since December 2014.

Each casino is square, with a ground floor of rusticated arcades carrying a piano nobile above, three windows to a face under alternating round and pointed pediments, a hinted upper floor of small mezzanine windows, and an elaborate square lantern crowning the pantiled roof. The two differ most in their frescoes: landscapes in the Gambara casino, where the vaulted loggias are a riot of colour, and a later, more classical hand in the Montalto, whose principal room combines fresco with plaster sculpture almost into trompe-l'oeil.

The site was already enclosed: an existing walled hunting ground known as the barco, which is why the garden could be laid out as a single descending axis rather than fitted around a house. The design is attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola -- attributed rather than documented, though a fresco of 1581 or earlier in the Gambara loggia shows the villa complete, which is the main argument that one mind planned the whole thing from the start.

The water is the engineering. The choreography of cascades and fountains, and the mechanical reliability of the flow, were only achieved after Tommaso Ghinucci, a hydraulics engineer and architect from Siena, was brought in to oversee the hydraulics and the building work. Pirro Ligorio, the antiquarian and architect, was also consulted, but it is Ghinucci's expertise that is credited with the water still running through the gardens today -- by gravity, as it was designed to.

The buildings are deliberately subordinate. Each casino is a square block: rusticated arcades or loggias at ground level carrying a piano nobile, three windows to a face under alternating round and pointed pediments, each window divided by paired pilasters, a mezzanine floor merely hinted at by small rectangular windows, and a square lantern with its own pilasters and its own real and blind windows crowning the pantiled roof. The two small casini on the upper terrace repeat the language at miniature scale, with Serliana loggias on Ionic columns, and their walls were given a deliberately roughened texture so they would sit with the raw rock of the Fountain of the Deluge beside them.

Why is it called Villa Lante if the Lante family did not build it?

Because the name stuck late. The villa was commissioned by Cardinal Gianfrancesco Gambara and finished by Cardinal Alessandro Peretti di Montalto; it only became known as Villa Lante in the 17th century, when it passed to Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rovere, Duke of Bomarzo, by which point it was already about a hundred years old.

Where is the main house?

There isn't one. Villa Lante is formed of two nearly identical casini standing side by side on one edge of the parterre, built thirty years apart by two unrelated owners. The space a central palace would have filled is occupied by the garden, which is the point of the design.

Who designed it?

The villa is attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola -- attributed, not documented. A fresco of 1581 or earlier in the Gambara loggia shows the complete villa, which is the main evidence that the whole scheme was conceived at once.

Why are there two almost identical buildings?

Gambara built the first casino and the upper garden in the late 1560s and then stopped; nothing more was done for the rest of his life. After he died in 1587 his successor as Apostolic Administrator of Viterbo, the seventeen-year-old Cardinal Montalto, completed the project and built the second casino to match.

How do the fountains work?

By gravity, as designed. The flow was made reliable by Tommaso Ghinucci, a hydraulics engineer and architect from Siena brought in to oversee the water engineering; Pirro Ligorio was also consulted. Water still runs through the gardens on that system today.

What are the crayfish claws at the bottom of the water chain?

A heraldic signature. The fountain at the foot of the catena d'acqua is set between sculpted crayfish claws, a reference to the cardinal's own device.

Was the garden damaged in the war?

Yes. In 1944 the gardens and casini were heavily damaged by Allied bombing after the fall of Rome, and a long restoration programme was completed in the late 20th century.

Is there a maze?

Not any more. A perspective plan of 1609 shows a wooded area of walks and vistas to obelisks plus a maze, all of which has since disappeared.

Is it worth combining with other gardens nearby?

It is a natural pair with Bomarzo -- the Italian source names the two together as the most famous 16th-century Mannerist gardens of surprise. The catena d'acqua also appears at Villa Farnese and Villa d'Este, which makes the three instructive to see against each other.