VILLA MEDICI, 
HERE is no building in Rome more familiar 
than the great cream-coloured villa, with 
its two small square towers, which rises 
on the Pincian hill against the rich green 
background of ilex and stone pine, and looks out 
over the city, across the close-cut grove, under 
which the fountain splashes into its wide, brown 
basin, and where St. Peter’s is framed in that 
famous sunset view, the purple dome against the 
flaming sky. 
Twice a week the heavy gate turns on_ its 
hinges to admit visitors; the surly old guard, a 
French ex-soldier, passes you in. You are on 
French territory, and you pass up the shadowy 
way, dark even on a summer’s day, the guest of the 
French Academy. To approach the villa, a broad 
walk runs along a terrace, bounded by a low wall, 
which in spring and summer is a mass of pink 
monthly roses. Part of it is now shut in by over- 
grown trees, but part is kept, as no doubt it all 
was originally, as a sort of quarter-deck from 
which to enjoy the prospect to the full. The 
view from the Villa Medici is not more magni- 
ficent to the eye than it is suggestive to the 
mind. It is the centre of a panorama of 
Rome, and from it almost every point of 
interest may be  discerned—monuments, palaces, 
and churches, the Colosseum in the distance, 
even the far-off aqueducts and the horizon line of 
mountains. The seven hills may be counted, the 
columns marked, and Hadrian’s mausoleum ;_ and, 
above all, your attention is claimed by the dome, 
which seems to be of the city, yet always to rise 
above every other building. The most beautiful 
position in Rome was well chosen by Lucullus, by 
Domitian, by Sallust, for their pleasure gardens. 
A votive tablet discovered in 1868 proves that the 
site of the villa formed part of the gardens of the 
Acilii Glabriones, a family conspicuous in Roman 
history from the time of the battle of Thermopylae, 
and of whom two, Maximus Acilius and Priscilla, 
embraced Christianity about a.p. 152, and were 
buried in the Catacomb of Priscilla on the Via 
Salaria. In the gardens of Lucullus, avenues of 
carefully-cut ilexes, bay, and cypress over-shadowed 
fountains, and were grouped round temples, shrines, 
and porticces garlanded with roses and jasmine. 
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There stood that marvellous Hall of Apollo, 
wherein Lucullus once feasted Cicero and Pompey 
at a cost of 50,000 drachme. Near by, it was, 
that Messalina took desperate refuge, and heard 
the garden gates behind her being broken down 
by the centurion Euodus, who came to make an 
end of her. On the site of the gardens of 
Sallust, the millionaire historian, the statue of the 
dying Gaul was found. 
On the eastern side, the villa garden is built 
upon the very walls of Rome, those walls of 
Aurelian which were stormed at this point by the 
Goths, and a gate opened by traitors, when the 
villa of Sallust was given over to fire and sword, 
and when its flaming towers gave the light to 
guide the conquerors to the first sack of Rome. 
On the south, the ground slopes down by gentle 
degrees in gardens and terraces, and adjoins that to 
which long ages ago the old senator, Pincius, gave 
his name, and which is still the favourite promenade 
of the Romans. From the height of the eastern 
wall we look down on those slopes where Alaric 
marshalled his army of Goths, and where on a later 
day was pitched the camp of Belisarius and the 
Byzantine host. Procopius says, ‘‘ The greater part 
of these buildings remain half-burnt, even now in 
my time.” The beauty of those famous gardens 
perished in 410. 
In the fifteenth century the ground on which 
the villa now stands was partly in the possession of 
Catherine de Medici and partly in that of Cardinal 
Ricci of Montepulciano, and the deed by which 
Catherine made it entirely hers is still in the 
possession of the Ricci family in Rome. In 1540 
Ricci had laid the first stone of the new building, 
but its accomplishment was left to Ferdinand de 
Medici, one of those ecclesiastical princes of the 
Renaissance whose dearest occupation it was to 
collect the precious remains of antiquity to adorn 
those delicious villas which remain among the chief 
charms of Italy. Ferdinand finished it, adorned it 
with antiques, with paintings and sculpture, planted 
groups of ilex and myrtle, added fountains, and 
finally gave it his name. 
This prince, who afterwards succeeded his 
brother as Grand Duke of Tuscany, was one of 
the most remarkable persons of his age. He 
