Historical Gardens

Strengthened by the waters, let us take you now to another part of Tuscia, a part where some of the loveliest gardens in Italy are to be found. Among these, villa Lante in Bagnaia: its park was designed by the most famous architects of the Renaissance, first among them Jacopo Barozzi called Vignola. The water springs from above, from the mossy Grotto of the Deluge, and runs straight from fountain to fountain to the great basin of the Square, at the foot of the slope.
Among waterfalls, jets and sprays many fountains overlook the great table where countless Cardinals used to take their meals. On the wide edges was placed the food, whereas the central basin, full of water, was used as cooler during summer dinner-parties. This is where Louis XIV's landscape architect Andrι LeNotre, learnt the use of woods as accessories to gardens. But French gardens are "planted", while Italian architects used the natural landscape as a stage and the streams as a set. Stone, water, evergreens: the garden is a symbol of Eden, the centre of the universe. Eden is the archetype of the landscape that becomes a garden.
 
Not far from Bagnaia is Bomarzo where, entering the park of the monsters, you will enter a fantastic world where luscious wild flora and man's imagination met to create something unique in the world. In order to understand Bomarzo, you have to understand the time when it was made: the declining XVI century, fond of giants, monsters, scenic inventions already heralding the Baroque. The first thing you see is a colossal head with a globe on its top and a castle on top of the globe. Further on, you can see a giant tearing the limbs of an adversary placed upside down. The effect is dramatic, but the proportions seem to remove the tragedy of the representation, as if it belonged to a world far away from the world of real people. Everything here was made to impress: gigantic animals, huge figures, nymphs and gods are everywhere. Among the gods Neptune stands out, a bearded old man towering over a great basin.
His shoulders are completely covered with moss, like an elegant green cloak. Vegetation has also played with the head of the Ogre: tufts of ferns spring from his cheeks, framing the wide-open mouth. It's a park of monsters, but you will be astonished, rather than frightened, because in fact it doesn't scare anybody, not even children who, on the contrary, enjoy themselves and have fun. And don't forget the Orti Leonini in San Quirico d'Orcia, the most typical Renaissance garden.