ITALIAN VILLAS 
According to Zocchi’s charming etching, the ducal 
villa of Poggio Imperiale, on a hillside to the south of 
Florence, still preserved, in the eighteenth century, its 
simple and characteristic Tuscan facade. This was 
concealed by the Grand Duke Peter Leopold behind a 
heavy pillared front, to which the rusticated porticoes 
were added later ; and externally nothing remains as it 
was save the ilex and cypress avenue, now a public 
highway, which ascends to the villa from the Porta 
Romana, and the semicircular entrance-court with its 
guardian statues on mighty pedestals. 
Poggio Imperiale was for too long the favourite resi- 
dence of the grand-ducal Medici, and of their successors 
of Lorraine, not to suffer many changes, and to lose, 
one by one, all its most typical features. Within there 
is a fine court surrounded by an open arcade, probably 
due to Giulio Parigi, who, at the end of the sixteenth 
century, completed the alterations of the villa according 
to the plans of Giuliano da Sangallo; and the vast suites 
of rooms are interesting to the student of decoration, 
since they are adorned, probably by French artists, with 
exquisite carvings and stucchi of the Louis XV and 
Louis XVI periods. But the grounds have kept little 
besides their general plan. At the back, the villa opens 
directly on a large level pleasure-garden, with enclosing 
walls and a central basin surrounded by statues ; but 
the geometrical parterres have been turned into a lawn. 
To the right of this level space, a few steps lead down 
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