VILLA GARZONI, 
COLLODI. 
HE gardens of the great villa at Collodi, 
near Pescia, are a monument of baroque 
art. The villa overpowers the little old 
town, whose ramshackle houses climb the 
steep hill behind it, and looms from afar, a huge, 
grey building, decorated with flamboyaat statues, 
and surrounded by mountains whose undulations 
are rich in olive woods and vineyards. ‘The 
garden is laid out against the hillside, and is 
evidently designed to impress the visitor as he 
enters with a grand coup dail. It differs in this 
from the gardens of an earlier day, in which you 
are led on from one revelation to another. Standing 
within the tall gates and spreading ironwork barriers, 
the formal garden spreads and expands upwards, 
lavishly bedecked with plaster figures, of great size 
and small merit. Although the garden, which is a 
work of the seventeenth century, cannot compare 
with those of previous ages, there is a fine boldness 
of idea in the planning of the great stairway, with 
its balustrades, sweeping up from the centre and 
rising one tier above another, forming two or three 
terraces. The terraces themselves are very pic- 
turesque, with cypresses towering against the blue 
distance, and on a summer day the air is heavy 
with the scent of orange blossom and jasmine. 
Below the perron of the stairway is placed one of the 
fantastic shell grottoes so dear to the garden archi- 
tect of the decadence. It still retains the pretty, 
foolish trick which must often have made good 
sport when it was new. You enter, a spring is 
touched, and a frieze of jets at the entrance keeps 
you a prisoner till the one who knows the secret 
bids it cease. We can fancy the conceit lending 
itself to many mock captures and feigned despairs 
in those frivolous, bygone summers. 
For Villa Garzoni is par excellence a garden 
arranged for pleasure. Situated in so isolated a 
position, far from Florence, alone in the mountains, 
save for what were only the few peasants’ houses, that 
clustered near it, it can only have been used for a 
summer resort, in those days of powder and patches, 
when its splendour was at its height. It is some- 
thing of an attempt to imitate the gardens of 
Versailles, is more rococo and less Italian than any 
other. One of its beauties is a stately framework 
of clipped cypress, a double wall, with shady path 
between, rising in volutes and arches, and going all 
round the central garden. The stairway culminates 
in a wonderful water-work centre-piece, which once 
played in all directions ; a mass of jets and spouts 
and spraying showers. 
Above this great central jew d’artifice, we 
mount again on either side of the descending 
stream which feeds the fountain; this is formed 
into a series of deep pools, and halfway up on 
either hand, reclines a more than life-size female 
figure in stucco, one personifying Lucca, the other 
Florence. While higher still, a giant “ Fame” 
‘owers aloft in a bower of green, and from the 
trumpet at her lips once blew a sparkling shower 
into the maidenhair-fringed basin at her feet. 
Behind her the wood begins. Plane trees and 
acacias make a green shade, and in the cool 
recesses above, we come to the most attractive 
little bath-house imaginable. It contains two 
bathrooms with tempting marble baths, and 
dressing-rooms, and two little sa/ons “ for repose.” 
The whole is decorated in white, blue, and gold, 
with gilt scrolls and frescoes of little amorini and 
garlands. The pretty sofas and tabourets are still 
covered with pale, faded silks. It gives a curious 
impression of the daintiness and luxury of Italian 
society in the days of the Grand Dukes of 
Tuscany, when the Marchese Garzoni, for whom 
the villa was built, held his mimic summer court 
in the mountains. The designer and architect of 
the villa and its garden is doubtful. It belongs 
to the middle of the seventeenth century, for 
Francesco Sbarra, a poet of Lucca, wrote an ode 
in 1652 entitled “The Pomps of Collodi,” in 
which he lauds the enchanting parterres and the 
lordly palace, constructed for the Marchese Romano 
Garzoni, and says: 
“Here where we lately saw ruins and caves, 
And horrid chaos, we admire to-day 
Delights and vastness and wonders.” 
He describes the rustic bridge, the labyrinth, the 
mimic theatre, and gives a long account of the 
fountains and the statues, ‘whose beauties are 
hidden beneath a silver veil of spray.” He 
speaks, too, of the castle, or palace, with its 
ample cortile, raised by him “who is the sovereign 
lord of all this region.” 
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