Villa Lante in Bagnaia - Tuscia

2 gardens – an easy one day tour

Villa Lante in Bagnaia - Tuscia

Bagnaia has a wonderful Renaissance Piazza. Coming from Viterbo you would cross over this place in order to get to the motorway.

It is, however, not just worthwhile to see the Piazza - to the left the old public washing basin - and the completely preserved medieval town (left side from Piazza), no, the main attraction is Villa Lante with its spectacular Italian garden that at its time was one of the most important garden facilities.

Take the first narrow road from the Piazza and walk up on your right side to the gardens.

"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 waterworks, jets, glitters, 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 André LeNotre, learnt the use of woods as accessories to the gardens.

But French gardens are "planted", while Italian architects used the natural relieves 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."