DOI Kapitel:
I. Florentine villas
DOI Seite / Zitierlink:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61216#0059
FLORENTINE VILLAS
of Zocchi, the eighteenth-century engraver, a semicir-
cular space enclosed in a low wall once extended be-
tween the house and the road, as at the neighbouring
Villa Corsini and at Poggio Imperiale. It was an ad-
mirable rule of the old Italian architects, where the
garden-space was small and where the site permitted,
to build their villas facing the road, so that the full ex-
tent of the grounds was secured to the private use of
the inmates, instead of being laid open by a public ap-
proach to the house. This rule is still followed by
French villa-architects, and it is exceptional in France
to see a villa entered from its grounds when it may be
approached directly from the highroad.
Behind Castello the ground rises in terraces, enclosed
in lateral walls, to a high retaining-wall at the back,
surmounted by a wood of ilexes which contains a pool
with an island. Montaigne, who describes but few
gardens in his Italian diary, mentions that the terraces
of Castello are en pante (sic); that is, they incline gradu-
ally toward the house, with the slope of the ground.
This bold and unusual adaptation of formal gardening
to the natural exigencies of the site is also seen in the
terraced gardens of the beautiful Villa Imperiali (now
Scassi) at Sampierdarena, near Genoa. The plan of
the garden at Castello is admirable, but in detail it has
been modernized at the cost of all its charm. Wide
steps lead up to the first terrace, where II Tribolo’s
stately fountain of bronze and marble stands surrounded
33
of Zocchi, the eighteenth-century engraver, a semicir-
cular space enclosed in a low wall once extended be-
tween the house and the road, as at the neighbouring
Villa Corsini and at Poggio Imperiale. It was an ad-
mirable rule of the old Italian architects, where the
garden-space was small and where the site permitted,
to build their villas facing the road, so that the full ex-
tent of the grounds was secured to the private use of
the inmates, instead of being laid open by a public ap-
proach to the house. This rule is still followed by
French villa-architects, and it is exceptional in France
to see a villa entered from its grounds when it may be
approached directly from the highroad.
Behind Castello the ground rises in terraces, enclosed
in lateral walls, to a high retaining-wall at the back,
surmounted by a wood of ilexes which contains a pool
with an island. Montaigne, who describes but few
gardens in his Italian diary, mentions that the terraces
of Castello are en pante (sic); that is, they incline gradu-
ally toward the house, with the slope of the ground.
This bold and unusual adaptation of formal gardening
to the natural exigencies of the site is also seen in the
terraced gardens of the beautiful Villa Imperiali (now
Scassi) at Sampierdarena, near Genoa. The plan of
the garden at Castello is admirable, but in detail it has
been modernized at the cost of all its charm. Wide
steps lead up to the first terrace, where II Tribolo’s
stately fountain of bronze and marble stands surrounded
33