In the bower of bliss
In the bower of bliss
I know how to get to paradise in this life. 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 at Bagnaia embodies the humanist ideals of the Italian Renaissance.
Soon after I moved to Rome recently, I began seeking out area gardens.
I took a Vatican Gardens tour to see the Pope's beautiful backyard and I saw the ingenious fountains at the Villa d'Este, about 20 miles east of Rome.
When the heat of the summer settled in, I fled the city almost every weekend, navigating a 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.
Exquisite estate
In 1578, Cardinal Giovanni Francesco Gambara was suffering an attack of gout when Pope Gregory XIII arrived at Villa Lante.
When the Pope saw Gambara's exquisite and costly estate above the hamlet of Bagnaia, he cancelled the cardinal's allowance — it must have been a bad day for Gambara.
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 with 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 B&B in a tile-roofed farmhouse surrounded by sunflowers.
Once I settled in, inn proprietor Dawne Alstrom gave me directions to Bomarzo, a garden as remarkable as Villa Lante in its own weird way.
I found Bomarzo, a privately owned “garden of monsters'', as it's called, in a narrow, wooded valley about a 20-minute drive from L'Ombricolo.
Once I ventured in, I realised that something profoundly strange goes on in the woods at Bomarzo.
Stone colossi wrestle to death in the dell; an elephant pinions a Roman legionnaire in its trunk; and a precariously tilted house seems to totter at the edge of a terrace.
Art historians attribute the bizarre stone gallery, created circa 1570 by Vicino Orsini, to the rise of the Mannerist style of art that evolved after the High Renaissance. But psychology might also explain it.
Vanquishing demons
Orsini was a papal soldier who retired, disillusioned, from the wars that wrecked the Italian peninsula in the 16th century.
At Bomarzo, I like to think he used his still-intact prankish sense of humour to vanquish his demons.
Villa Lante is comparatively demure, intent on perfection, not astonishment — without the distraction of flowers — and unchangingly green through the seasons.
When I passed through the gate, I caught a strong whiff of freshly clipped boxwood from the parterres around the Fountain of the Moors on the lower level, the interlocking hedges shaped in spirals, squares and circles with little lemon trees peeking out.
Then I turned around and saw the chain of fountains that decorates the hill.
Drawn from springs in the nearby San Valentino hills, the watercourse emerges from the highest grotto, known as the Fountain of the Flood, then vanishes and reappears in pools and channels flowing between the two palazetti, or “little palaces''.
There's the Fountain of the Dolphins, richly emblazoned with the Gambara crayfish crest; the scalloping Chain Fountain, as ramblingly beautiful as any mountain stream; and the long Cardinal's Table, with troughs of running water that served as finger bowls for Gambara's dinner guests.
I read in Helena Attlee's Italian Gardens that, from top to bottom, Villa Lante tells the story of human evolution, beginning with the rustic Eden created by God at the Fountain of the Flood and climaxing in the perfect geometry of the lower parterres.
Garden of dreams
On another summer getaway, I stopped to see a garden in the medieval town of Ninfa, owned along with its hilltop neighbour Sermoneta by the noble Caetani family, which still has a palazzo in the historic centre of Rome.
Ninfa, open to visitors on selected summer weekends, is a garden ideal for wandering around in with a book and a dog or for lying on fresh-cut grass and dreaming.
We saw fine old Holm oaks and white maples, then stopped at the ruined Church of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Pope Alexander III was crowned in 1159 after having been forced to leave Rome by supporters of Emperor Frederick I.
Protected from extreme weather by the Lepini Mountains to the east and the chilly Ninfa River, the 20-acre garden has myriad microclimates in which the Caetanis experimented with non-native plants such as banana, bamboo and magnolia.
Go there ... Bagnaia
From the UAE
Rome is the closest airport to Bagnaia.
From Dubai
Emirates flies daily.
Fare from Dh3,470
Alitalia flies daily.
Fare from Dh4,070
Qatar Airways flies daily via Doha.
Fare from Dh2,860
— Information courtesy:
The Holiday Lounge by Dnata.
Ph: 04 4298576
Where to stay
Near Ninfa
Hotel Principe Serrone (www.hotelprincipeserrone.it), Via del Serrone, Sermoneta: Simple rooms with excellent views; doubles start at about $120 (Dh441), including breakfast.
Near Villa Landriana
Corte in Fiore (www.corteinfiore.com), 16 Via degli Olivi, Ardea: About five miles from the coast. Doubles start around $67 (Dh246) per person, including breakfast.
Near Villa Lante
- L'Ombricolo (www.lombricolo.com), Civitella d'Agliano: A beautiful six-bedroom country house. Doubles start at $162 (Dh595).
- Balletti Park Hotel (www.balletti.com), 2 Via Umbria, San Martino al Cimino: A modern resort hotel outside Viterbo starting about $90 (Dh330) per person, including breakfast.
Where to eat
- About five miles south of Ninfa, the hill town of Sermoneta has several good restaurants, including Al Castello, 7 Via della Fortezza, Sermoneta, which often has a three-course tourist menu (about $30, or Dh110, including refreshments).
- Around Villa Lante are two good choices:
Ristorante Gino al Miralago, 58 Lungolago G Marconi, Marta, a terrific place for fresh fish (about $35, or Dh128, per person, not including refreshments).
Hostaria del Ponte (www.hostariadelponte.it), Bagnoregio, known for homemade pasta (about $35, or Dh128, per person, not including refreshments). - Near Villa Landriana, the restaurant at the Corte in Fiore, cooks with produce from the farm next door ($25 to $30, or Dh92 to Dh110, per person, not including refreshments).
Information
- Italian Government Tourist Board (www.italiantourism.com).
- The American Horticultural Society (www.ahs.org), 7931 E Boulevard Drive, Alexandria, VA 22308: This sometimes offers study tours in Italy, including the Gardens of Florence, scheduled for May 22 through May 30.
- Grandi Giardini Italiani (www.grandigiardini.it), 6 Piazza Cavour, 22060 Cabiate: This has information about some of Italy's best gardens.
- Secret Gardens Italy (www.secretgardensitaly.com): This offers tours of gardens in and around Rome.
La Landriana — a green jewel of collaboration
La Landriana is an estate a few miles north and inland from Anzio, on 25 acres of land left bare and mine-pocked after the Second World War.
The Marquis Gallarati-Scotti and his wife, Lavinia Taverna, bought it at an auction in 1956 and it remains the family's country home, receiving visitors only by appointment.
To see it, I booked a tour with Sue Webster, an English-speaking guide and avid gardener.
La Landriana's story starts with a bag of seeds given to the marquise by a friend, which she planted and watched grow.
After that, she ordered more plants native to the Mediterranean, Australia or California, according to her interest of the moment.
A garden took shape but without coherent form. In 1967, she summoned English garden architect Russell Page to La Landriana.
Page was a devotee of Renaissance formal gardens, which were then out of style. The relationship between Page and Taverna, who died in 1997, proved especially fruitful as the master brought order and subtlety to the passionate experimenter's diverse plant collection.
Page divided the hillside garden into 32 themed “rooms'', using Taverna's nurslings to create subtle artistic ensembles of texture, scent, shape and colour.
As a result, La Landriana is a gardener's garden, known among connoisseurs for its subtle design and unusual variety of plants.
A quick guide for a tour in garden land
- Ninfa is about 45 miles southeast of Rome by way of the Pontina, near the hill town of Sermoneta. It is open the first weekend of the month from April to October, with additional opening dates in the summer.
Get tickets before you go, at the Palazzo Caetani, 32 Via delle Botteghe Oscure, Rome. The garden can only be seen on a guided tour, so you may find yourself tagging along with an Italian-only group. After the end of the tour, you can also visit the walled garden at the foot of the old fortress.
Grapefruits dangle from trees in a small orchard and you can enter the castle ruins over the moat where ducks and swans glide. - Villa Landriana (www.aldobrandini.it), 51 Campo di Carne, Tor San Lorenzo, is near the beach town of Ardea, about 25 miles south of Rome by way of the Pontina. Guided visits only.
- Villa Lante is in the village of Bagnaia, about an hour's drive north of Rome. Open Tuesdays through Sundays.
