CASTELLO AND PETRAJA. 
N contrast to the stately Poggio Imperiale, or 
Poggio a Cajano, second in interest to the old 
Medici villas, the Royal House of Italy owns 
two small, almost homely, villas, seldom 
occupied, but thoroughly liveable, and not without 
their own share of historic interest. 
It is something of a mystery why the Medici 
should have wished to build two small villas close 
together, as these are. They were both built by 
Buontalenti, the architect who helped to plan 
the gardens of the Pitti Palace. Castello lies 
low, and its fagade fronts the high road, an arrange- 
ment the Italian architects were very fond of 
where the space was small. The ground behind 
the villa runs backward to a high retaining wall. 
In the middle stands a stately fountain by Tribolo, 
and when Montaigne visited it he wrote of its 
berceaux, or pleached walks, and of its cypress 
groves; but these have been sacrificed to the 
fashion of modern gardening, which has spoilt so 
many of these old pleasaunces. 
Between the great lemon houses at the back 
is a large and fantastic grotto, with arabesques of 
coloured shellwork and groups of nearly life-size 
animals, comic and grotesque—a unicorn, a camel 
with a monkey on its back, deer, a wild boar 
with real tusks, and birds and other animals. It 
is difficult to understand how these grottoes should 
ever have been thought beautiful; but as a cool 
retreat for a summer’s day, where the maidenhair 
fern hung in a green curtain, and the water 
rushed or dripped from every conduit, they were 
unrivalled. It has a fine fountain by Gian Bologna, 
the wres ling figures on which recall Pollaiuolo’s 
group of Hercules and Anteus. Mr. Latham 
shows us the fountain in detail, and the photo- 
graph of the East Garden explains exactly where 
it stands. 
Perhaps the most interesting character whom 
the villa has ever received was Catherine Sforza, 
who lived here for the last seven years of her 
life. Gone, then, was that beauty, which is 
described as glowing like the sun, as rivalling 
lilies and roses. Her wild and revengeful per- 
secution of her first and second husbands’ 
murderers had faded into the past, and having 
married Giovanni de Medici, she retired to Castello, 
and devoted herself to the training of her little 
boy, that Giovanni de Medici who was to be so 
widely known as Giovanni delle Bande Nero, the 
last of the great Condottier?. 
Tt was in 1504 that he joined his mother 
there, and she bought him ‘a small and handsome 
horse.” The mother of Cosimo I. died at Castello, 
to which Cosimo himself returned after his secret 
marriage with Camilla Martelli, and it was from 
here that he sent that vigorous message: ‘*I am 
not the first Prince who has taken a vassal to wife, 
and I shall not be the last; my wife is of gentle 
birth, and is to be respected as such. I do not 
seek for quarrels, but I shall not avoid them if 
they are forced upon me. When I make up my 
mind to do a thing, I do it regardless of conse- 
quences, trusting in God and my own right hand.” 
A charming walk through an ilex wood and 
meadow leads to where Petraja hangs along the 
hill. Halfway, is an exquisite little campanile and 
chapel, half hidden in a group of cypresses, which 
the country people proudly call /a meravigha di 
Castello. 
As we approach it, Petraja stands in striking 
lines, the tower, which recalls that of the 
Palazzo Vecchio, rising from a shoulder of ilexes, 
the long walls sloping down into the valley, while 
beyond show the towers and dome of the City of 
the Lily. 
The villa of Petraja is a simple white house 
with broad eaves, its squareness relieved by the 
tower. It stands in the usual formal garden, which 
is well kept and full of fowers. Every day 
flowers are sent off from here to the Royal palace 
at the Quirinal. On one side of the villa stands 
a huge ilex tree with a rustic staircase leading 
into its branches, where there is a platform on 
which Victor Emmanuel used to dine when he 
and his wife “Rosina” were staying at Petraja 
or Castello. On the other side is a fountain, 
the masterpiece of Tribolo, which was brought 
here from Castello by the Grand Duke Pietro 
Leopoldo. Vasari says of it: “Il Tribolo 
carved on the marble base a mass of marine 
monsters, all plump and undercut, with tails 
so curiously twisted together that nothing better 
can be done in that style. Having finished it, he 
took a marble basin, brought to Castello long 
before. In the throat, near to the edge 
of the said basin, he made a circle of dancing boys 
holding certain festoons of marine creatures, carved 
with excellent imagination out of the marble ; also 
the stem to go above the said basin he executed 
with much grace, with boys and masks for spouting 
out water, of great beauty, and on the top of 
