144 THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 



CHAPTER XII. 

 THE VILLAS OF FRASCATI. 



THE four great villas at Erascati are complementary to each other, and constitute a 

 remarkable group. The Torlornia is, perhaps, the most important from an artistic 

 point of view, as its lay-out is remarkable for its harmonious homogeneity. The 

 house is, perhaps, hardly adequate to the scale of the terraces, stairways and cascade, 

 but it is a very pleasant specimen of Tuscan simplicity. Mondragone, on the other hand, is a 

 veritable city as seen from the lofty point of Tusculum. Occupying the summit of a hill 

 slope, with a great hollow square of buildings extending down to a pentagonal bastion, 

 it resembles a miniature Caprarola. The detail in this instance is of the school of 

 Vignola, and far surpasses the late, and somewhat faded, rococo of the great Aldobrandini 

 Villa, which, however, commands attention by its vast lay-out both at front and back. 

 The fourth example, the Villa Falconieri, is all in admirable proportion, possessing a great 

 length of building surrounded by grand levels of forecourts, terraces and gardens at a lower 

 level. The actual detail of the house is not very happily conceived, and it has been, 

 perhaps, over-restored. The upper garden, with its cypress-surrounded basin of water, 

 is unique in its pictorial appeal. 



Frascati is one of the few places which seem to justify their vast renown. The cluster of 

 hills set with ancient settlements, Marino, Tusculum, Rocca del Papa and Grotta Ferrata, faces 

 the great sea of the Roman Campagna, in which Rome seems but a mere speck marked by the knoll 

 of St. Peter's dome. At such a distance it seems infinitely worth while to have piled up such 

 a mass to form the umbilicus of a resuscitated Rome. A commencement of the Apennines, the 

 Subiaco hills, forms a guardian range set against the sparkling waters of the distant 

 Mediterranean where the ancient Roman port of Ostia is vaguely surmised. The masses of 

 olive trees covering the slopes with silver greenery, the darker evergreen oaks and clustering 

 pines crowning the crest give to Frascati the sense of a refuge city rising out of a desolate plain. 

 Villas and houses of cream shading to brown, with darker tones in their roofs, nestle in the 

 folds of the greenery that enwrap them. The striking mass of the Villa Aldobrandini tells out at 

 a great distance, at which other lesser structures are merged in the general cluster of houses. The 

 freshness of air, the strong frames and healthy visages of the peasant inhabitants bear out this 

 impression of a sanctuary, and the earlier life of Latium is recalled as much as by the ruins of the 

 Republican epoch. The jealous fury of the Roman populace that obliterated nearly all the traces of 

 the ancient Tusculum seems understandable from the standpoint of the citadel plateau. From this 

 point the main road to Naples, like a thread, unrolls itself into the distant tangle of hills from below 

 the very walls that dominate it. Local patriotism insists on the identity of certain ancient vaulted 

 chambers of massive early Roman concrete faced with reticulated stonework and banded with 

 Roman bricks as the veritable habitation of Cicero. The marble fragments of sculpture and 

 architectural detail found on the spot are clearly of a good epoch, while the open-air theatre, 

 though small in scale, shows clear evidence of early Grecian influences. It has retained quite 

 a ring of seats, about a dozen in height, as well as some substantial remains of the foundations 

 of the scena. 



Cicero doubtless had a frame equal to many joltings, unless we are to suppose he was carried 

 to and fro in a litter. The Renaissance architects had extensive ideas of slopes for carnage ways, 

 but, great as the outspread of their carriage ways is on the plan, imagination boggles at the task of 



