ROMAN VILLAS

Lodovico Chigi. In many respects it recalls the Sienese
type of villa. At the entrance, the highroad is enlarged
into a semicircle, backed by a wall with busts; and on
the axis of the iron gates one sees first a court flanked
by box-gardens, then an open archway running through
the centre of the house, and beyond that, the vista of a
long walk enclosed in high box-hedges and terminating
in another semicircle with statues, backed by an ilex-
planted mount. The plan has all the compactness and
charm of the Tuscan and Umbrian villas. The level
ground about the house is subdivided into eight square
box-hedged gardens, four on a side, enclosing symmet-
rical box-bordered plots. Beyond these are two little
groves with statues and benches. The ground falls away
in farm-land below this level, leaving only the long cen-
tral alley which appears to lead to other gardens, but
which really ends in the afore-mentioned semicircle,
behind which is a similar alley, running at right angles,
and leading directly to the fields.
At the other end of Rome lies the only small Roman
garden comparable in charm with Prince Chigi’s. This
is the Priorato, or Villa of the Knights of Malta, near
Santa Sabina, on the Aventine. Piranesi, in 1765,
remodelled and decorated the old chapel adjoining the
house ; and it is said that he also laid out the garden.
If he did so, it shows how late the tradition of the
Renaissance garden lingered in Italy; for there is no
trace of romantic influences in the Priorato. The grounds
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