gardens were destroyed which with a little ingenuity might have been 

 saved. As it is, we have one more quite uninteresting drive with its 

 meaningless walks that meander through a nondescript park and lead to 

 nowhere. The view towards the Sabine and Alban mountains, across 

 Rome to the ever-changing Campagna, is the redeeming feature. But 

 what is the finest landscape in the world with such a foreground ? A 

 handful oi forestieri go up there for the view, which the guide-books 

 mark with an asterisk, and get away again as soon as they may. 



Though the gardens have suffered so much of late years, good trees 

 having been replaced by unhappy-looking fir-trees and palms quite out 

 of character with the place, there still remain fine masses of ilex, some 

 groups of cypress, and vestiges of sweet-bay and box hedges, to show 

 what the grounds have been in the past. 



One who wrote of this villa about the middle of the eighteenth 

 century says of Cardinal Neri Corsini : " He made also the magnificent 

 and spacious cortile encircled with many piers, with wrought-iron gates 

 by which you may pass into the first garden divided into four parts by a 

 fountain and very fanciful compartments. . . . Then follow two laby- 

 rinths with statues and antique terminals, before you arrive at a magnificent 

 theatre encircled with porticoes and columns ingeniously formed of 

 clipped evergreens, and there are statues and busts and commodious seats, 

 and in the middle there is a broad basin {peschiera) with two tritons, 

 which recline upon a rock and which throw up a great spout of living 

 water, the which, falling with a great noise, seems to call the spectator to 

 observe the constant play of it." 



" Here in the hot summer days comes a noble company of Cardinals, 

 Prelates, and literati of every rank to listen to the various compositions 

 that they recite before the erudite Accademici Quirini. They sit or recline 

 in groups upon the benches and terraces and under the porticoes. . . ." 



Though not included within the city walls until the middle of the 

 seventeenth century, the Janiculum was a favourite site for gardens and 

 villas ; several of the palaces which line the Strada della Lungara had 

 gardens stretching away up the hill which, like those of the Corsini, are 

 now much curtailed. The more notable of these were the Villa Corsini, 

 the Villa Lante, Giardino Salviati, and the Villa Barberini. . 



33 E 



